In Debt with Health Insurance

41 million Americans did not have health insurance in 2001. In 2004, the number rose to 45 million. And in 2005, 47 million people were living without health care. On the other hand, 84% of Americans had health care in 2005 according to a census. So what is wrong with America's health care?

has the world’s most expensive healthcare system, yet one-sixth of Americans are uninsured. Approximately one-third (31%) of adults and a little more than one-half (54%) of children do not have a primary care doctor. Federal spending on healthcare in 2005 alone totaled $600 billion, a massive one-quarter of the federal budget. Someone files for bankruptcy every 30 seconds in the U.S of health concerns. And every 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure due to unaffordable medical costs. The U.S. spends six times more per capita on the administration of the health insurance system than Western European nations, who insure all citizens.“ www.realtruth.org/articles/090203-005-health.html. “In United States, the annual cost of health care per capita is $5,711. http://www.visualeconomics.com/healthcare-costs-around-the-world_2010-03-01/#ixzz12f0I1lbk

The U.S. healthcare system is remarkably complex, and even healthcare workers struggle to understand it. The U.S. population gets health coverage by government programs, employers, and private insurance. Notably, because of the complexity and fragmentation of the health care system, there is a percentage of the population that remains uninsured. According to CNN Money, the uninsured rate in the U.S. dropped from 18.2% in 2010 to 10.3% in 2016, this drop was under Affordable Care Act(ACA) (). The goal of the ACA was not to give health coverage to all the uninsured population, rather it was to try to decrease the percentage of the population that remained uninsured(). There is a lot of inequality in the distribution of health among the U.S. population

Health insurance comes as second nature to many of us. We grab that blue and white card and put it in our wallet and forget about it until we are sick or injured. When this happens, there it is, cushioning our fall like the extra padding it provided to cushion our wallets. This is not the case with everyone, however. Many Americans have no cushion to fall back on, no blue and white card to show the emergency room when they have an unexpected health concern. No HMO with a convenient co-pay amount when their son or daughter develops an ear infection.

Some might argue that a right to healthcare could possibly increase U.S. debt and deficit. Strong case, but if the U.S. government can spend millions on other countries then I doubt debt is a serious issue when it comes to medical services

Recently the Untied States top priority has been to provide accessible and affordable health care to every American. Those that lack access to coverage find it much more difficult to seek proper treatment and when they do they maybe left with astronomical medical bills. The CommanWealth Fund found that one-third or thirty three percent of Americans forgo health care because of costs and one-fifth or twenty percent are thus left with medical bills that have problems being able to pay. The federal government, through the Affordable Care Act (2010), has mandated that every person have health coverage in order

Today uninsured Americans make up approximately 4.2 million people. Because these families cannot afford the high cost of insurance, they do not get the health care needed to maintain good health. They must live with the pain and worry of the problem and when they do get medical care, they assume huge debts and another worry of how to pay for it.

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) had put more open doors for Americans to live healthy and longer life. Be that as it may, few individuals are living without insurance due to monetary results. They put their life in the danger of human services administrations. They are having less medicinal services results, getting low quality of care than the general population who has insurance. The proportion of uninsured and insured individuals soar by 25% in 2000. Individuals messes with medical coverage exceptionally and disregarding it in few point in view of their financing issue and lack of education. As indicated by Institute of Medicine (IOM, 2002), 18,000 individuals kicked the bucket without getting a decent social insurance benefit since they were

Many of the uninsured or underinsured are low-income or working families. According to the Kaiser foundation, “…adults are more likely to be uninsured than children. People of color are at higher risk of being uninsured than non-Hispanic Whites” See Appendix 1 (Kaiser Foundation, n.d.). Many Americans therefore go without needed health care each year due to the cost alone. These are the people with chronic diseases that need preventative services that may prove to reduce cost in the long run. With the economy failing the added depression and stress helps to hinder good health.

The rising cost of health care has led companies to stop offering health insurance for employees, and private insurance is often too expensive for people to afford. Many families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but are unable to pay for private health insurance. Health care costs in the United States have more than doubled in the last twenty years. Insurance premiums are rising five times faster than wages, and Americans are spending more money on health care than people in any other country. The average amount one person pays per year for health care in the United States is 134 times higher than the average of other industrialized countries (“Health Care Issues”). Even people who have insurance aren’t guaranteed coverage. Many insurance companies find loopholes to avoid paying for expensive medical treatment, leaving people with massive debt from medical bills. Medical bills and illness cause over half of all personal bankruptcies in the United

Health Care in America has recently changed by President Obama and reform and changes are heading our way. The Affordable health care act or better known as “Obama Care” is changing the way each American family access and our provided health care. America prior to the induction of this bill had about 15% of its population uninsured, and with one of the most profitable health care systems in place America leads the world in medical advances and technology. Those posses a serious problem, which is how does a country have such success in health care finically but its people remain sick? President Obama has changed that as of March 2010 by placing a Health care system that is going to change the current one to essentially benefit all

Everybody talks about how bad the US healthcare system is, which it might be a little bad, but it is not all bad. In the last one hundred years, the life expectancy went from 47 to 78, and 3.5 years in the last decade. That is a huge difference. Since 1960 heart disease went down 56 percent. Doctor visits used to be for when people knew they were going to die, but now they will not die when they go to the doctor. Even though all of those good things have happened, there is still a lot of bad things about the US healthcare. There is an average of 101,000 preventable deaths per year in the US. Most of those deaths happened because of the way the healthcare system is organized. Race, income, and environment influences who gets access to healthcare and who does not, which is just wrong. Even though the life expectancy rate went up, it is still significantly lower than other countries. Over half of people who do not have healthcare are African-American. There are more hospitals in wealthier area, and public hospitals are closing where they are most needed.

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century the United States has always had a realization that there was a problem with obtaining affordable health insurance. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare, was signed into law in March 2010. This law enables people who were unable to afford healthcare the ability to obtain a healthcare plan at an affordable rate. In 2009 a survey was taken as to the amount of people in the United States that carried health insurance. In table one below you can see over 50 million people in the United States did not have any type of insurance, which is close to 17 percent of the population (see table 1 below). “According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “32%

Healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of health and the prevention of sickness diagnosis, and treatment of disease, illness, and injury. Because of the need for healthcare is so important, the America government had to come up with a way to make sure people have healthcare and be able to pay for it. The government came up with a healthcare system that use insurance and premiums to make sure one has coverage when they go to the hospital for healthcare needs. If the government and hospitals really care about people’s health, then why do they make insurance and premiums so high that people cannot afford them? In 2005 there was an estimate 45 million Americans that lacked health insurance, and the numbers have been climbing since (Clemmitt, Universal Coverage 1). If the government says that they care about human life, then there should just be universal coverage so everyone can get their healthcare needs met no matter if that person is poor or rich.

According to the US Census Bureau, around 33 million people in the United States of America did not have health insurance in 2014. That is about 10.4 percent of the US population. I was fortunate enough to have insurance growing up. I remember when my father lost his job when I was quite young, my mother was very worried because he had no health insurance. He was not worried about it as much as she was, but unfortunately, he fell off his bike and fractured his knee and forearm. He was so stressed out about how he was going to pay for it because unemployment was definitely not going to help. He had to take out a loan and luckily got a job soon after so he could pay it off quickly. Many people are not able to pay off loans for medical services so quickly. We live in the richest nation on earth and we should not go without health care. It could stop medical bankruptcies, improve public health, reduce overall healthcare spending, and help small businesses. Health care should be a necessary government service. According to a 2009 study from Harvard