In the United States, healthcare has been one of the most controversial issue. Everyone needs to see a doctor when they don’t feel well or for routine check-ups. However, the reality is that not everyone could afford to see a doctor regularly to prevent serious illness. As a result, many people have died due to finding out their illness a bit too late because they have waited until the last minute to see a doctor and it was too late for the doctor to do anything about it. The situation could have been different if they were not lacking healthcare coverage. The government has stepped in to fix the issue but the problem persists due to the complexity of the healthcare system and its involvement with the political system. The Democratic and Republican
I will compare the current health care system with the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that became law on March 23, 2010. The current system, which is being phased out between 2011 and 2018 is increasingly inaccessible to many poor and lower-middle-class people. About 47 million Americans lack health insurance, an increase of more than two million people from 2005 (Rover, 2011) the increasingly complex warfare between insurers and hospitals over who pays the bills is gobbling up a great deal of money and the end result is that the United States pays roughly twice as much per
"The Affordable Care act (Obamacare) main focus is on providing more Americans with access to affordable health insurance, improving the quality of health care and health insurance, regulating the health insurance industry, and reducing health care spending in the US." Yet five years since the implementation of Obamacare, 30.1 million people lost there private insurance,because it did not meet the 10 essential health benefits. Another 3-5 million people will lose there company sponsored health insurance, since companies find it cheaper to pay the penalty than buying there employees health insurance. Also medications will become more expensive due too new taxes that will increase prescriptions for individuals. Americans will find it cheaper to pay the penalty for not having health insurance, since it 's much cheaper and twice as less as the hassle. Obama care lacks to tell what the implications are on the health care system, how are doctors affected and what it means for average Americans living to ends meat.With Obama care addressing how it 's going to make health care affordable it does not address long-term care with an estimated 70% of Americans turning 65 will at some point,depend on long term care in nursing or assisted living facility. A elderly American can spend $42,000 to $84,000 per year and if you are poor enough, you may qualify for Medicaid but those who simply can 't afford the care they need. The Affordable care act originally had a community living
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.
For too long, the American public was held hostage by predatory insurance companies. These companies used their power and privilege to keep their companies afloat while ensuring that much needed medical care was out of reach for a majority of the American public. Citizens were subjected to rules, regulations and policies that proved to be detrimental to their needs. Individuals with pre-existing medical conditions were denied care or were made to pay very expensive premiums. Policies were cancelled if additional medical conditions were identified and policies offering the bare minimum of coverage, were expensive preventing individuals from being able to afford health insurance. Americans over the age of 50 found it impossible to obtain quality insurance without paying way too much in premiums. Policies were denied for reasons that benefitted the insured. The result was that many Americans were uninsured, underinsured and when medical situations occurred, citizens were not able to obtain the proper treatment and care. This also placed a strain on the economy because individuals would go to the emergency rooms for treatment and not pay their bills resulting in the increase in premiums. The cycle continued, with bills not paid and premiums increased. This caused the
For years, socialists and armchair activists have argued that this problem is a result of a ‘vindictive upper-class’ who wishes to suppress the middle and lower classes. So,why then are these increases being pegged on the government? Simply, it’s because-despite their best efforts-government interferences have made the cost of health insurance increase drastically. In a recent article debating Universal Healthcare, John Davidson from Mic News wrote that, “All these government interventions have driven up health care costs to the point where many Americans simply can’t afford basic coverage, even under the ACA, which did nothing to address underlying cost drivers but did plenty to drive up the price of premiums through heavy-handed regulations”[1]. Arnold Kling, who is a scholar of economics at the Cato Institute, addresses this very same issue in his article; wherein he likens Universal Healthcare to the Titanic, “[...] headed toward the iceberg of unfunded liabilities”[2]; and to which he blames on a regulative system called ‘Cost Containment’, which was created to keep costs lower. On the contrary, the scholar argues, the system is “[...] very difficult to implement[...] without at some point stifling innovation and hurting quality”[3], wherein he cites laser eye surgery-a procedure not yet highly regulated-which has seen costs decrease, on average, about 30 percent, yet still maintains quality and accessibility. In brief, there will always be a class of people in a society that cannot afford the luxuries of life, to have a large population of people-spanning across age and class divides-be unable to afford said luxuries is a sign that there may be a problem; problem, thy name is regulations. These regulative systems implemented by the government, like the aforementioned cost containment, have stifled innovation and competition,
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
The foremost concept of the Affordable Care Act was to allow for more poverty-stricken Americans to be able to gain access to health care. Yet, if you widen the amount of people can get free health care, who is meant to pay for them? In order for this new program to work, the US government needed enough young and healthy Americans to pay into the costs of having health care. However, problems began when Americans were finding that it was less expensive to just take the penalty for not having health care. Elementary office secretary, Catherine Moore explained in a personal interview, how a co-worker had also come across this same realization. “I worked with a lady that during the first year [of the Affordable Care Act] it was cheaper for her to take the penalty than to pay for insurance.” So now, not only is the government missing out on money that could have been used to support those who could not afford health care, but it is also encouraging healthy people who may not
Our failure to do so means that all Americans pay higher health care costs, and 45,000 pay with their lives”.That’s like saying that if you don’t have the resources to get health coverage, you can’t afford for your life.
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
The citizens of the United States are burdened with many hardships. Most of these hardships stem from poor political policies and programs set forth by past politicians. However, politicians cannot be the only blame. This country is relatively young. Our political policies are still in somewhat of a “beta” period. We only learn from trial and error. This country is in the middle of a political shift. Now is the time to make the necessary changes to mold and shape our future society for the better. Far too long have Americans been denied basic necessities such as education, food, employment, and most importantly healthcare. The healthcare crisis has been the topic of debate for many years among politicians across all the governmental factions. The catalyst applying the brake on healthcare progress has been a strong division of politicians on what is ethical and what is legal when it comes to the government putting its foot in the door. Along with that debate there is also whether or not the government should do anything at all or just let the private sector and the citizens hash it out. Throughout U.S. history many attempts have been made to reform our healthcare system to no avail. Healthcare reform is clearly an issue that takes great socioeconomic knowledge and political tact. President Barack Obama is the first president to present us with such a plan. This plan is known as The Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare” (a term coined by a group of Republicans to disenfranchise
Some of the approaches of the ACA are ineffective, poorly targeted, or not ambitious enough to address deeply rooted problems in our broken health care system. For example, individuals with middle income who falls between insurance gap and cannot buy health insurance or qualify for Medicaid, health insurance is usually an unaffordable option. Even if a health insurance plan is available on the exchange for which those individuals can afford the premiums (without a subsidy), they most likely cannot afford the high deductible and coinsurance which they have to pay before the insurance plan begins. This amount is typically a few thousands of dollars a year, in addition to the premium
It is estimated there are between 20,000 and 45,000 deaths a year due to lack of health insurance. “The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured…”, Andrew Wilper, M.D. Isn’t that sad? There shouldn’t be long hours of waiting before a patient can be treated just because he or she is uninsured. If it is an urgent matter, then we all should get equal treatment, don’t you
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%