According to the textbook, “Health insurance, like other forms of insurance, reduces the financial burden of risk by dividing losses among many individuals” (Kapoor, Dlabay, & Hughes, 2015 p. 373). As medical care advances and treatments increase, health care costs also increase. The purpose of health insurance is to help people pay for their care. It is considered to be a form of protection that can lessen the amount of financial burdens an individual could suffer from due to injury or illness. In some instances, like mine, health insurance can be a real pain. I am on my father’s Tricare plan, and it can be really great at times, but it also makes things difficult. For example, I injured my back this summer while I was gone for training. I
Half of the uninsured are in families where the head of household has a full-time job. Not only is the number of uninsured growing, so too are the ranks of the underinsured. About 29 million people in this country with private insurance are at risk of financial disaster in the case of serious illness or injury. This number increased by nearly 50% in the last decade. Denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions is a common practice by insurance companies whereby the insurer refuses to provide coverage for already-existing conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease or cancer (if they have been treated and are not currently active). The Affordable Health Care Act has helped prevent this from happening
Health insurance is essential in order to assist in paying for hospital and clinic visits. Without health insurance cost would be astronomical and people would not be able to afford health care. Blue Cross/ Blue Shield and Health Maintenance Organization, were some of the many insurance companies widely used before the Affordable Care Act. Although health insurances existed, many individuals and families were not able to afford them due to the increase in the cost of health care. New research over the years has enabled the creation of new medicine and technology in our practice. This leads to services being more expensive for individuals, which raises the price of insurance.
Being insured can relieve a lot of stress off a person. The cost of healthcare is an
Living in the United States, there is one essential thing you need to have, which is health insurance. Health insurance is a type of insurance that can covers cost of medical and surgical expenses when you need them. Without health insurance, the cost of one single surgery would be a enormous number. But in the United States, there are about 46 million americans are uninsured. To them, the cost of health insurance is too high. In America, the average cost of health insurance per month is about $328 and the minimum wage per hour in here is $7.25(where cite from?). From here, we can conclude that it is too expensive for those people to get sick. So, is the health insurance cost unjustifiably high? The answer is the highly developed technology, waste of health care budget and the free competitor in the health insurance market, caused health insurance’s price to remain so high.
No one plans to have oneself or a family member diagnosed with a chronic disease or to be involved in a debilitating accident. Unfortunately, these situations are all too familiar and can happen every day. Having health insurance when these life changing events occur can provide a person or family
Each state has their own policies for Medicaid eligibility, services and payments. Medicaid plans have three eligibility groups such as categorically needy, medically needy and special groups. Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is a program that offers health insurance coverage for uninsured children under Medicaid. If Medicaid does not cover a service, the patient may be billed if the following conditions have been met such as the physician informed the patient before the service was performed that the procedure was not covered by Medicaid and if the patient has signed an Advance beneficiary Notice form. However, there are also conditions where the patient cannot be billed if necessary preauthorization was not obtained or service
It is important to begin with the fact that the United States has no formal healthcare system. There are five subsystems: private employer provided insurance, Medicaid for low or no income individuals, Veteran’s hospitals serve military veterans, workers compensation serves individuals that have on-the-job injuries and services for active military and dependents. There is also the Medicare system that serves individuals over the age of 65 (Williams & Torrens, 2008). Even with all these subsystems, there are still many individuals without health insurance. It is also important to realize that having health insurance coverage and having access to healthcare are two entirely different issues. An individual can have insurance but still not have access to healthcare. Of course the goal in the United States is to provide adequate healthcare access to everyone (Beedasy, 2010). This is not always possible due to different demographics such as age, socioeconomic, and other issues. I have health insurance but with the deductible extremely high many times I cannot afford to go to the doctor. For individuals that are low income, this issue is a problem. There is a gap between income low enough to qualify
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.
In 1993 First lady Hillary Clinton was assigned to a proposal to reform healthcare with the goal to become universal by US president Bill Clinton, this reform was titled Task Force on National Health Care Reform (Boundless, n.d.). At that time, 37 million Americans did not have health insurance and the cost to obtain health insurance was very unaffordable to the middle class (Boundless, n.d.). The main purpose of this reform was to mandate employers to provide health coverage to all employees HMOs’. However, this reform was aggressively opposed by the health insurance industry, libertarians, and conservative republicans stating that it was restrictive to the employees choice (Boundless, n.d.). Additionally, they argued that the proposal a
Millions of Americans cannot afford healthcare services, and therefore have no financial defense in battling illnesses. Even with the affordable care act in place, there is a constant struggle for many who cannot afford the premiums that come with these insurance policies. "One of the reasons why we have uninsurance in the United States is that it has become increasingly unaffordable to purchase insurance because the cost of care and the premiums for care have gone up at multiples of the rates of increase of wages and of the cost-of-living in the United States" (Blumenthal, 2014)
The issue of healthcare coverage under the federal health reform has been politically debated by many Americans, including the current Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The healthcare reform enacted in 2010 under President Obama’s regime intended to support the ongoing healthcare system as a building block to enhance more access to health insurance coverage for millions of uninsured Americans; yet the government’s tireless effort to ensure all individuals are covered remains a major issue across the country.
The cost of health insurance has changed drastically over the years as it has become more expensive. Depending on personal characteristic, the cost of health insurance may vary. For instance, as individuals grow older the more expensive it becomes. In this case, health insurance is more costly because “older individuals require more health care” therefore “the cost of providing health care is rising” (Madura &Atlantic, 2012). Not only does this affect the high cost of health insurance, but the number of individuals uninsured. As stated by Madura and Atlantic (2012), “about one in every five workers is uninsured” and has increased since then because health insurance has become unaffordable. As a result, individuals tend to seek health care elsewhere as they can no longer
In an article on the Uninsured it states that “Lack of coverage increases the unpredictability of medical expenses and the potential for financial catastrophe, including bankruptcy” (Content.healthaffairs.org). The stress that is added when trying to plan financially can become overwhelming, “even for the majority of Americans who have coverage, maintaining it is not a sure thing, and the prospect of losing it can cause anxiety
Currently, the issue of health insurance has been a bone of contention for the public regarding whether the United States government should provide this health plan or not. People often possess different perspectives and refer to pros and cons on both sides of the spectrum. While some believes a universal healthcare system will set a foundation for a lower quality of service, increasing governmental finance deficit, and higher taxes, others do not hold the same thought. A universal healthcare system brings enormous advantages rather than disadvantages, such as all-inclusive population coverage, convenient accessibility, low time cost, and affordable medical cost, all of which not only provide minimum insurance to the disadvantaged but also improve the efficiency of medical resources distribution.
Health insurance in the United States is a highly politicized issue. In recent years, many strides have been made to extend health insurance coverage to all Americans with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). While the program has been vigorously debated in the public realm, arguments are often centered around political ideology rather than economic theory. This paper seeks to challenge the entire structure of the current health insurance model, since its inception in the 1950s. Through the overuse of a third-party payer model, a magnitude of problems have emerged that severely diminish the efficiency of health care allocation in the United States. This paper proposes a model that seeks to correct issues of cost, access, and market efficiency by adapting the Medicare Part D payment scheme for an all encompassing insurance model.