Health Care For The Uninsured Children

“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Implications for Public Health Policy and Practice.” Public Health Reports. Association of Schools of Public Health. n.d. Web. 14 July 2015. This paper claims that the PPACA will cut the number of uninsured Americans in half. The act attempts to provide nearly universal coverage and improve the quality and equity of said coverage through reforms to insurance standards and the marketplace. It also attempts to improve the quality of healthcare and the efficiency of its delivery by allowing consumers to edge the system into a more integrated state and measuring performance. It attempts to encourage preventive medicine by targeting chronic illnesses and funding community-based medicine. These changes will bring huge opportunities for improvement in the system, many of which are subtle and nuanced and will only be seen as the plan rolls into act over the next few

Canada and the United States have quite a few differences in their healthcare status and healthcare services. Canada has a universal coverage, no financial barriers, more equitable, no coinsurance and unequal drug benefits and the health insurance plan is administered in each province by a public agency which operates on a non-profit basis and is responsible to the provincial government; whereas, the United States have some financial barriers, there is no universal public health insurance and access primarily depends on the type and extent of coverage, responsible for administering and controlling the health care system is diffused, and involves private insurers, employers, and federal, state and local governments. Infant mortality in both countries are similar and there is a small gap between the life expectancy between the two countries.

Early in the panel, Barbara Vinograde talked about how easily a monthly payment for private insurance can cripple a low-income family – as payments can often be large fractions of someone’s budget. Worse yet, Betsy Momany describes an all-to-common situation where those who do have certain government insurances can’t utilize them because care providers won’t take them in due to the lack of profitability when helping them. This occurs in a productivity-based system, where physicians are paid by the insurance companies, which leads them to accepts those insurances that pay them the most per visit. Further effects of this lack of assistance and care are things like obesity and diabetes amongst low-income children. According to Dr. Eleanor Lisa Lavadie-Gomez, major food companies work hard to get children addicted to sugary food, and they profit off of the fact that the poor can only buy processed food because they can’t afford to spend money of fresh food that could go bad. Because these families don’t have better options, they experience negative health consequences, which then go untreated when these children aren’t provided proper

Large populations of Americans are uninsured mainly because of the high cost of insurance. Majority of the uninsured are the low-income working families’. The adults represent a higher percentage of the uninsured than children. Before the law, you could be denied coverage or treatment because you had been sick in the past, be dropped mid-treatment for making a simple mistake on your application, hence, the Affordable Care Act was implemented into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barrack Obama to make sure that every American irrespective of their status will be insured and have full access to proper health care benefits, rights and protection(1). To understand the

Medicaid is a social health care program that covers nearly 60 million Americans, including children, pregnant women, seniors, parents and individuals suffering with disabilities. Medicaid is the biggest source of funding for health related services and medical needs for the people with low income in the United States. This program is funded jointly by the state and federal level governments, but it is the state’s responsibility to manage this program. The Medicaid program is not a required program that states have to use, but all 50 states have implemented this program. With the introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and its passing in 2010, the ACA unveiled its plans to expand Medicaid eligibility to nearly all low-income adults as an addition to the other groups that fall into the Medicaid eligibility. The Medicaid program had “many gaps in coverage for adults” because it was only restricted to the low income individuals and other people with needs in their own specific category. In the past, the majority of the states who had adults that did not have children dependent on those parents were not eligible for Medicaid. These low income adults without dependent children would be without medical insurance assistance before the ACA was introduced. Medicaid is now available to all Americans under the age of 65 whose family income is at or below the federal poverty guideline of “133 percent or $14,484 for an individual and $29,726 for a family of four in 2011” (NSCL).

As of 2008, there are approximately 73.9 million children living in the United States. Of these children more that 5.5 million have some form of mental or physical disability. In addition, 77 percent of uninsured children come from low-income families (CoverTheUninsured.org, 2008). However, Missouri’s population of uninsured children fares much better at almost half the national average or 7.2 percent (Missouri Foundation for Health, 2004). More than 8 million children in America are uninsured. That means 1 out of every 10 does not have any form of health coverage. Racial and ethnic disparities among those uninsured children are dramatic. Most recent data has found that one in 13 White children is uninsured compared to: one in five American Indian children, one in six Latino children, one in nine African American children, one in nine Asian/Pacific Islander children. (Children’s Defense Fund, 2010)

Vulnerable populations is a term that creates an image of distinct and narrow-minded minority though the vulnerability of every individual to illness, disease, and injury has made health insurance necessary and probable for a huge portion of the American population. Vulnerable populations in the United States includes parents and children of immigrants, race/ethnic minorities, the disabled poor, the elderly, foster children, families ineligible for welfare, prison inmates and former offenders, children with special care needs, and residents of rural areas. However, the uninsured population has developed to become one of the vulnerable populations in the United States because of the risks and dangers associated with the lack of health insurance. As a result of the increased of the number of the uninsured, they have a huge financial impact on the vulnerable population.

Medicaid has help many qualified Americans who were historically unable to access health care. At the same time, it has raised questions and controversies as how efficient is the plan overall. Various research studies were conducted and contradicting results were presented. According to Paradise and Garfield (2013), some said that having no coverage at all is better that having a Medicaid coverage. On the other hand, some expressed that Medicaid paved a way to improved health due to increased access to services that provides prevention of diseases, health maintenance, and effective treatment (Paradise & Garfield, 2013). As for me I am in favor of the later, health care access for all. It comes down to equitable distribution of resources

Though the American healthcare system has made big steps towards providing affordable healthcare for everyone, there remains a growing population of people who fall through the system’s cracks. These people are the medically underserved. They are typically the victims of unfortunate life circumstances that has left them without health insurance, or with insurance that provides inadequate coverage. The underserved also includes those who have trouble accessing healthcare for any reason. Anyone with illnesses or disabilities that require assistance beyond their coverage, or people who live in remote areas where healthcare services are sparse fall under this title. The term also does not exclude those who have sufficient insurance and resources, but struggle to understand and navigate our increasingly complex system of healthcare.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or ‘Obamacare’ in 2010 and its implementation in 2014,there has been a steady decline in the uninsured population of the United States of America. The number of Americans with health insurance, has reached a historic peak. According to recent data from the Census Bureau about health insurance coverage, the number of uninsured Americans fell from 33 million the year prior to ACA implementation to 29 million in 2014.The total uninsured rate dropped by more than 4 percent since the health care law took effect. The ACA has significantly reduced the number of Americans who were not able to acquire health insurance due to poverty, unemployment, or having a pre-existing condition.

One of the most controversial issues in politics today is healthcare, specifically ObamaCare, also known as Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has effectively insured millions of low-income American households. Under the ObamaCare, Medicaid has been expanded to states that want to participate. It plays an exceptionally crucial role in the healthcare coverage, and access for rural communities as they are more likely to “be poorer, less likely to have insurance, and less intense users of medical services overall” (Richards et al., 2016, p. 573). A study conducted by the Health Services Research found that Medicaid patients received appointments nearly 80% of the time in rural areas, but only 60% in nonrural areas (Richards et al., 2016, p. 570).

Children’s health correlates to the health of the nation. The health of a child is a direct factor of adult health, productivity, and stability. If a nation has high morbidity and mortality rates for children, it will negatively impact that society’s growth and development. It is imperative that children have health insurance and access to quality preventative and primary care, in order to foster healthy development into adulthood. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was established as a part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, to acknowledge to millions of children who lacked health coverage (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2014). CHIP is a federal and state

The purpose of The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to increase access and make it more affordable for all Americans. Unfortunately, the US health care delivery system lacks the ability to plan, direct, and coordinate from a central agency making it difficult for citizens to obtain health coverage. For that reason, The Affordable Care Act in 2010 became the most extensive health care reform in US history with its main objective to reduce the number of uninsured. The ACA permitted some standards in the health care delivery system to achieve universal coverage. Some examples were authorizing health insurances to start covering children and young adults below the age of 26 under their parents’ health insurance plans also allowing the law to lower

The ACA of 2010 has a key goal of increasing access to health care by providing uninsured American’s with options to obtain health insurance. One way this is being done is allowing parents to keep their children on their health insurance plan, up to the age of 26 (HHS, n.d.). Another example is the option for states to expand Medicaid, and receive funding from the federal government to accomplish this. Medicaid covers

The Medicare, Medicaid, and other types of public funded health insurance programs are the other major sources of insurance in the United States. These types of insurance programs target some particular populations of people and most Americans don’t fall into such populations. This mode of healthcare coverage left over 50 million American (17.6 of the population) including about 7.5 million children, without any form of health coverage in 2009. (Lapierre,2012)