The Downfall to Today's Medical Advancements in the United States is the Huge Expense

The United States is known as one of the greatest world powers: however it is held back by its weak healthcare system. As of 2010 the US healthcare system currently ranks the 37th best out of 190 countries (Murray). Before the introduction of the Affordable Care Ac in 2010, the United States had an individual insurance market. It was the responsibility of the individual or their employer to take care of their healthcare costs. On top of this, millions of people could be denied insurance by different agencies due to pre-existing claims. Healthcare was expensive, but the costs were nothing compared to the medical bills owed by an uninsured person. Universal healthcare is a basic right not a privilege. Everyone should be given the

The United States is the only remaining industrialized nation without some form of universal access to medical services (Light, 2002). As an industrialized nation, it is shameful to see so many people suffer on various levels due to inadequate access to appropriate health care (Rashford, 2007). Research will show that with equal access to healthcare for everyone in the United States, there would be much more preventative care and therefore the cost for treating chronic diseases could be greatly reduced. The New England Journal of Medicine states that they believe a requirement, in the United States, is broad access to wisely designed programs of health promotion, in which the concept of health promotion is expanded to include a goal of cost reduction. This expanded concept directly addresses the challenge of preventing illness as well as that of reducing health care costs (New England Journal of Medicine, 1993). Did you know that preventable illness makes up for approximately 70% of the burden of illness and the associated costs (New England Journal of Medicine, 1993). Many Americans feel that universal health care is not a role that the government should be involved in however; Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs have been shown to improve health for

The documentary we watched in class is called “Sicko”. The documentary’s purpose was to look at healthcare in the United States, mostly driven by profit margins, compared to universal health care in different countries such as Canada, U.K., and France. The thesis of the film is the need for universal healthcare in United States and the US’s lack of a solution. The film began with Moore, the film’s director, interviewing some of the “privileged” Americans who were as he stated, “living the American dream,” by having insurance. The individuals interviewed shared some of their horror stories dealing with health insurance and hospitals in the United States. One daunting story in particular was from a couple Larry and Donna Smith who were forced

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.

Health care spending in the United States of America as a percentage of the economy has reached astonishing heights, equating to 17.7 percent. This number is shocking when compared to other counties; in Australia health care is 8.9 percent, in United Kingdom 9.4 percent, in Canada 11.2 percent. If the American health care system were to hypothetically become its own economy, it would be the fifth-largest in the world. While these statistics sound troubling, they lead us to look for answers about the problems surrounding our system. The first health insurance company was created in the 1930s to give all American families an equal opportunity for hospital care and eventually led to a nationwide economic and social controversy that erupted in the 1990s and continued to be shaped by the government, insurance companies, doctors, and American citizens. In this paper, I will go in to detail about the various opinions regarding the controversy, the history behind health insurance companies, and the main dilemmas brought out by the health care crisis. Greedy insurance companies combined with high costs of doctor visits and pharmaceutical drugs or the inefficient hospitals all over America can only describe the beginning to this in depth crisis. Recently, the United States health care industry has become know for the outrageous costs of insurance models, developments of various social and health services programs, and the frequent changes in medicinal technology.

Contrary to what many people believe, America’s health status is not quite “up-to-par,” to say the least. Over forty-seven million people in the United States lack health insurance; that is more than 15% of our nation’s population! At first this disturbing truth seems impossible to believe, being as America is one of the most technologically advanced and economically developed countries in the world. “We spend trillions of dollars per year on medical care. That’s nearly half of all the health dollars spent in the world. But we’ve seen our statistics. We live shorter, often sicker lives than almost every other industrialized nation. “We rank 30th in [global] life expectancy” (Adelman 2008). Knowing this brings rise to the question: why are

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

Consequently the U.S. spends more money than any other country on health care, and the medical care that is being provided may be compromised. Research has shown that the lack of health care insurance compromises a person’s health. However, there continues to be unnecessary death every year in the U.S. due to lack of health care

According to Squires and Chloe, the United States of America is considered as the greatest country in the world, with the largest economy, military powers, freedom of religion and speech, and one of the most successful democrats (2). However, the United States in the only western modernized nation that does not offer free healthcare services to all its citizens. Apparently, the costs of the healthcare services to the uninsured individuals in the US are prohibitive, where the insurance companies are interested in making higher profit margins than providing adequate health care to the insured (Squires and Chloe 4). These conditions are unexpectable and incompatible with the United States

In 2007 documentary Sicko Michael Moore addresses the issue of America’s health care system. This topic has been in continuous debate among our political leaders for many years now. Michael Moore believes America’s health system is morally corrupt which is unreasonable for being the wealthiest country in the world. In many instances throughout the film, he argues the fact that the American health care system is subject to fraudulent decisions, aiming towards governmental funds, rather than the rights of American citizens. Furthermore, he compares health care conditions from around the world, arguing that countries with this benefit are much better

Imagine a nation where one did not have to worry about deductibles, high monthly insurance rates, and being denied health care. Is this possible? Can the United States (U.S.) have this or is such a nation fiction? Michael Moore, known documentary filmmaker, set out on a mission. This mission was featured in his documentary, Sicko. The mission consisted of multiple rhetorical strategies to disclose the positive and negative effects of socialized health care. The great thing about this topic is that it’s applicable to a wide audience. From teenagers just starting to get health insurance, to people midway through their life that may have been burned by the industry, to seniors that need to still work in their eighties to pay off their health care bills. Moore gives good insight to both sides of the argument, and allows the audience to examine all factors. Through many accounts of Moore’s credibility, emotional connections, and pure facts; the audience is strongly convinced that the U.S. should move to a socialized health care system.

The Michael Moore movie pointed to a myriad of issues relating to the American healthcare system that are both startling and interesting. The movie was produced before the Obama Administration signed the Affordable Care Act into law, but Sicko reports that nearly 50 million Americans do not have health insurance. About 18,000 Americans die each year because they don't have health insurance. The system is clearly broken, and politics seems to have been the reason that insurance companies keep a strangle hold on consumers. For example, Sicko reports that there are nearly four times as many lobbyists in Washington D.C. pushing for their clients' agenda as there are members of Congress.

Sicko is a documentary about the American Health Care system as seen through the eyes of the filmmaker Michael Moore. It presents the health care system in America as being fragmented and inefficient by using anecdotes to illustrate the plight of the 46 million Americans without health insurance and also to address the wider concerns about the kind of care that the insured get. The film also compares the non-universal and for-profit U.S. system with publicly funded health systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba.

As mentioned earlier, for the millions of other Americans that are insured with a healthcare plan, they still struggle to pay for urgent care. For example, in Sicko a woman had a decent healthcare plan that would provide coverage for her family. Her husband, Tracy became ill with cancer. His doctors wanted to try different medications to see if it would help him. The insurance company denied to pay for his medication due to experimental reasons. Tracy’s doctors then suggested to do a bone marrow transplant. The doctor mentioned that this treatment had been successful on other patients. Once again the insurance company denied to pay for Tracy’s treatment. Ultimately, Tracy passed away due to lack of treatment. This is the reality of many sick Americans. They are focused to delay important medical procedures/medication because they cannot afford the cost. Insurance companies try to find ways out of paying for their customer’s insurance. They use excuses such as “experimental reasons” as a means of denying to pay for treatments or they state that the customer had a pre-existing condition which they do not cover. Sicko depicted that the more denials a health insurance company issues, the more money the company saves.

Another issue that the economy is encountering is the case of health insurance. Several individual American citizens are lacking a sufficient amount of health care. In 1965, Medicare was established to provide healthcare among the elderly and the poor in a form of Social Aid to benefit Americans (Patterson, 2008). However, although there are approximately 16 million individuals insured by Medicare, this is small amount that is given to pay for medical bills (Universal Health Care, 2008). Along with this issue, there are also several Americans who are underinsured and also not insured at all (Kalvantz, 2009). In addition, there are those who are insured but their claim is denied. In a study of a documentary film, Sicko, by Michael Moore, it was discovered that several companies were required to deny at least ten percent of the claims (2007). This has led to the result of several individuals with the worst health issues and cases of death due to the lack of assistance in the health care industry. These issues have been a severe factor in the insufficiency of social assistance.