The Decline Of The 21st Century

As Americans we should all be afforded access to healthcare. Access to healthcare is an individual right according to the human rights amendment. The human right to health guarantees a system of health protection for all. The human right to health means that everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which includes access to all medical services, sanitation, adequate food, decent housing, healthy working conditions and a clean environment (What is the Human Right to Health and Health Care, 2015). However there are strengths and weaknesses to every healthcare system and the U.S. Healthcare system is not exempt. I plan to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the U. S. Healthcare system (What is the Human Right to Health and Health Care, 2015).

If there is one thing that most Americans are in agreement with, it is the vile shape of our U.S. health care system. There is no argument that the U.S. health care system is in need of an overhaul, however, there is much debate over just how to effectively go about the process. The public have voiced greatest concern in the health care areas of costs, quality and access. Many presidents have pondered the idea of health care reform; a few even made attempts to start the ball rolling. The first

Healthcare has been a long standing battle for the United States. The need to provide access

Many forces shape our current healthcare system. Our cultural belief and values shape our views on our social, political, and economic exigencies. While our beliefs and values usually represent basic or core impressions of individuals in our society, they are constantly changing. Thus, they lend a sense of dynamism to our health care system. Our cultural beliefs and values also impact our sense of ethics, which also influences how we allocate our health resources and our sense of social justice, or lack of it. And although ACA represents a major reform the American health care system, history will tell us whether it survives after the next election cycles. Many of the forces in American health care that affected its evolution in the past are present today.

There exist sharp divisions among the American on the issue of reforms. Despite every citizen’s need for high quality and affordable health care, freedom of choice concerning healthcare and cost sharing in health care provision, there is a significant difference in priority that American citizens assign to these goals. Furthermore, there exist differences in values and beliefs. Most of these reforms made have greatly ignored human rights in that they treat quality health care as an option or privilege and not as a human

Healthcare and healthcare reform are hot topics of debate in today 's society. As the population grows and life expectancy increases, the nation faces many challenges in providing healthcare benefits to the people.

In The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, T.R. Reid, a Washington Post reporter and NPR commentator, compares the United States’ health care system to the systems of other industrialized democracies. In this journey, he analyzes costs, quality, and overall functioning of the different systems. Through his first hand experiences around the globe, Reid illustrates a variety of systems, emphasizing the changes America needs.

The healthcare system of the United States was established as a system of health and welfare programs created to provide affordable treatment to the citizens of the United States. Recently, the Affordable Health Care Act was passed changing the structure of the system (Mulvany, 2012). While in theory the new arrangement works, it has its flaws due to the resulting cost, slowness, and the government interfering with religious and personal beliefs. These problems have led many people to question the role of the government in the life of the individual.

America is a country in trouble. The leader of the free world is losing touch with the beliefs that it has been founded on. Its government grows farther from the people creating a clear distinction between those in power and those not, and on March 21, 2010 they passed a major bill. A bill that makes the American government the care providers for the country, essentially stating that companies lead by American citizens were not capable of doing it themselves. The bill that was passed is known as the Health Care-Reform bill. This Health Care –Reform is a terrible solution to the even worse problem that is Americas’ broken Health care system.

“There are three basic goals for a National Health Care System; 1) keeping people healthy, 2) treating the sick and 30 protecting families against financial ruin from medical bills”, (Physicians for a National Health Program, 2016). No truer statement could there possibly be written or proclaimed as there is a crisis in healthcare costs across the United States. United States, one of the most developed western country, yet we suffer from – higher infant mortality rates, have shorter life spans and are affected by more chronic disease and or illness – than our contemporaries all while spending the most for insurance per capita and less annual doctor visits with less physicians, (OECD Health Data 2015). There is a question to be answered, “why”, why are we trailing our contemporaries and more important than that is, is our National Health Care system really working for us? The year 2010 was the beginning of change in the United States where we transitioned from primarily private insurance and welfare to a universal healthcare model, under President Obama with the signing into Law of the Affordable Health Care Act March of 2010. The purpose of the Affordable health care act is to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable healthcare, however in 2016 we are still questioning we’ve been successful based on funding, government sponsored healthcare programs, effects on the current HCO, elderly, military and accessibility.

This year being an election year means that the American people are confronted with many issues and disparities that plague our nation. One of these hot button topics is that of healthcare. The United States is the only developed nation without a universal healthcare system, but spends the most for health services. With so many Americans lacking the adequate care needed or facing bankruptcy due to piling medical bills, one must look at the health disparities that are causing this super power nation to inadequately serve its citizens.

Everyone has their own views on what they think the United States healthcare system should consist of. Consequently, the healthcare system has been flawed for many years and does not plan to change anytime soon. According to Luft (2006), “rapid and wide-reaching technological innovation, the ready access to care for the insured, and clinical and patient autonomy” (p.1). These are some of the strengths the US healthcare system are proficient in providing. In contrast, the weaknesses of the healthcare system outweigh the system’s strengths. Luft (2006) examined and acknowledged the following:

However, modern America has become somewhat of a wasteland trashed with fast-food chains at every corner and tobacco companies luring unsuspecting customers into an unhealthy addiction, so keeping a healthy lifestyle can be somewhat troublesome. If we wish to change this, we have to show citizens first hand accounts of the life-altering effects of dementia. Take my grandfather for instance, after about 30+ years of his father running their family owned car business, he took it over and ran it for another 40+ years until he was afflicted with vascular dementia after a bypass surgery about ten years ago. Watkins Automobiles, the business, was his lively-hood, he cherished waking up every morning and going to work just so he could see another happy customer walk off the lot with a car. Little did he know, little did any of us know, that his world would come crashing down. I remember it clearly, I was in Hawaii around six years of age when my mom got the call. "Your grandfather just had a heart-attack," my heart sunk. Here I am eight or so hours away and all I could do was wait for a phone

The 21st Century, the time period that we all live in today, smothered in continuous social, economic and political issues. An interesting era for films of this genre is the late 1930’s to early 1940’s which we see reflections in the literature today. War World 2 was a turning point in history and was a time of sheer horror in many places such as Spain, Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe. In today’s age, contemporary literature writers often draw their inspiration and ideas from the writers that have gone before them. As a result, many works of 21st literature face the events and movements from the past in order for them to make sense of the present. The two connections that are very apart in all four of my texts is power and control and the theme of hope. The way that each of these connections have been linked throughout the late 1930’s time period based texts show how important they are into understanding what is still happening in the 21st century. The texts that I have chosen to study are “The Book Thief”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “The Pianist” and “Defiance”. The reason I have chosen to study these are to shed light onto why 21st century literature quite often seem to take ideas from the past to help make sense for the future as “you have to know the past to understand the present.”

“The 21st Century” we approach in an accelerated way to the new millennium, some changes are already visual and some others we don’t even imagine what they are. We all have to be prepare for those changes full of opportunities but of uncertainties as well. Many changes in technology, and communications just to mention a few. The whole environment will be very different, the big challenge will be to prepare and learn to live in this new environment due to the fact that not all of us are prepare for the big step.