Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Universal health care access
Universal health care access
Health systems from around the world
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Universal health care access
Every year a citizen that is employed or non-employed suffers from not having proper healthcare coverage. In most developed nations they have universal coverage that covers their citizens and their families. Apparently here in the U.S, healthcare is a controversial problem for our economy and even a bigger problem funding these benefits for our citizens. Now the main question that citizens are asking is "If most developed nations have universal coverage, why doesn't the wealthiest nation which is the U.S have it?" (Ponnuru)This is an issue that no one but the government can let us know what's really going on at the moment, but results are always popping up as misguided quest or funds being lost. Healthcare needs to step up their game because time is really being wasted.
Half of the 50 million people in the U.S are currently uninsured. The new healthcare laws were intended to expand health insurance coverage, but one trade association warned that it will end of driving 60 million manufacturing workers out of coverage supplied by their employers over the next decade unless it was fixed before that occurs.(Newton-Small). Companies offered health coverage to their employers but certain laws prevented them from giving some benefits, forcing them into something that is called a one sized fit's all system. Basically like a waiting list. The problem with the one sized fit all system is that healthcare is just simply too large and complexed to manage at a government level. This is a system the government created that they cannot fix. The charge of Obama care would dump 60 million workers into the laws state and federal insurance exchanges which lead to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With the economy down, the ACA is far from being aff...
... middle of paper ...
...r the following year .According to Forbes , the government will spend $ 2 trillion to expand the traditional insurance coverage to about 30 million uninsured .The government for its part says that by repricing program for the insurance market , the Affordable Care Act has already saved consumers approximately one billion dollars.
The disturbance of knowing that you are a hardworker and not getting proper health benefits is a big issue. You never know when something is going to happen to you or even family memebers. Not having health insurance is a scary thing and people who are working and paying taxes should be able to be under a universal coverage. If universal health coverage is in countries that are not as wealthy as us, we should be having the best coverage because of funds for the best. All this extra money that is being wasted is not helping the people.
The aim of affordable care act (ACA) was to extend health insurance coverage to around 15% of US population who lack it. These include people with no coverage from their employers and don’t have coverage by US health programs like Medicaid (Retrieved from, https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/). To achieve this, the law required all Americans to have health insurance which is a reason of controversy because, it was inappropriate intrusion of government into the massive health care industry and insult to personal liberty. To make health care more affordable subsidies are offered and the cost of the insurance was supposed to be reduced by bringing younger, healthier people to the health insurance system. This could be controversial, if older, sicker people who need the coverage most enter the market but younger group decline to do so. The insurance pool will be unbalanced and the cost of coverage will rise correspondingly.
Due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law on March 23rd, 2010; health care in the US is presently in a state of much needed transition. As of 2008, 46 Million residents (15% of the population) were uninsured and 60% of residents had coverage from private insurers. 55% of those covered by private insurers received it through their employer and 5% paid for it directly. Federal programs covered 24% of Americans; 13% under Medicare and10% under Medicaid. (Squires, 2010)
is the wealthiest country in the world and yet it is the only major industrialized country in the world that does not guarantee health care as a right to its citizens. Around 45,000 uninsured Americans die each year(What The U.S.). As a nation built upon the ideals of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and the idea that the government is responsible for protecting it’s people’s basic rights, it is a great source of shame that the U.S. does not have universal health care. It is the government’s job to ensure it’s citizens’ rights, not make a profit off their suffering and the denial of one of their basic rights. Universal health care could save lives and ease suffering, physically, financially, and emotionally. It would take away a great financial burden off of each individual as well as the nation and government as a whole by not wasting all the per capita that we currently waste without universal health care. It would even be beneficial to capitalism because people would be more willing to take risks without the fear of having to go medically uninsured (Why The U.S.). By allowing its people to suffer and die, especially just to make a profit that will be needlessly wasted anyway, the U.S. government is committing a great immorality. Are not human lives more important than allowing greedy independent companies make a profit off of their suffering and deaths? As a country that is even willing to go to wars to protect the basic rights of foreign peoples,
Sicko, a film by Michael Moore was released in 2007. The film investigates health care system in the United States. One would definitely get amazed by the facts and figures explained in this documentary. The movie explains failing health care system in the United States. America has advance medical technology, big hospitals, and educated health care professionals, but these facilities are not universal. The film starts by talking about true American stories; what some people have experienced from current health care system, those who had and did not had health insurances. The story starts by Adam, one of 50 million people in America who does not have health insurance. Due to an accident Adam required a medical treatment, but for the reason of not having any insurance he puts stitches on his leg by himself. The second story was about Rick, who accidentally cut the top of his two fingers, middle and the ring while working on the table saw. As a result of not having health insurance, Rick could not put the top of his middle finger back because it was costing 60,000 dollars and he did not had the money. So, he decided to put his ring finger back because it cost 12,000 dollars which he could afford. The movie does not go into the detail of 50 million people who do not have health insurance, but it’s about 250 million Americans who do have health insurance.
For decades, one of the many externalities that the government is trying to solve is the rising costs of healthcare. "Rising healthcare costs have hurt American competitiveness, forced too many families into bankruptcy to get their families the care they need, and driven up our nation's long-term deficit" ("Deficit-Reducing Healthcare Reform," 2014). The United States national government plays a major role in organizing, overseeing, financing, and more so than ever delivering health care (Jaffe, 2009). Though the government does not provide healthcare directly, it serves as a financing agent for publicly funded healthcare programs through the taxation of citizens. The total share of the national publicly funded health spending by various governments amounts to 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, GDP (Jaffe, 2009). By 2019, government spending on Medicare and Medicaid is expected to rise to 6 percent and 12 percent by 2050 (Jaffe, 2009). The percentages, documented from the Health Policy Brief (2009) by Jaffe, are from Medicare and Medicaid alone. The rapid rates are not due to increase of enrollment but growth in per capita costs for providing healthcare, especially via Medicare.
One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
An issue that is widely discussed and debated concerning the United States’ economy is our health care system. The health care system in the United States is not public, meaning that the states does not offer free or affordable health care service. In Canada, France and Great Britain, for example, the government funds health care through taxes. The United States, on the other hand, opted for another direction and passed the burden of health care spending on individual consumers as well as employers and insurers. In July 2006, the issue was transparency: should the American people know the price of the health care service they use and the results doctors and hospitals achieve? The Wall Street Journal article revealed that “U.S. hospitals, most of them nonprofit, charged un-insured patients prices that vastly exceeded those they charged their insured patients. Driving their un-insured patients into bankruptcy." (p. B1) The most expensive health care system in the world is that of America. I will talk about the health insurance in U.S., the health care in other countries, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and my solution to this problem.
There is an ongoing debate on the topic of how to fix the health care system in America. Some believe that there should be a Single Payer system that ensures all health care costs are covered by the government, and the people that want a Public Option system believe that there should be no government interference with paying for individual’s health care costs. In 1993, President Bill Clinton introduced the Health Security Act. Its goal was to provide universal health care for America. There was a lot of controversy throughout the nation whether this Act was going in the right direction, and in 1994, the Act died. Since then there have been multiple other attempts to fix the health care situation, but those attempts have not succeeded. The Affordable Care Act was passed in the senate on December 24, 2009, and passed in the house on March 21, 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 23 (Obamacare Facts). This indeed was a step forward to end the debate about health care, and began to establish the middle ground for people in America. In order for America to stay on track to rebuild the health care system, we need to keep going in the same direction and expand our horizons by keeping and adding on to the Affordable Care Act so every citizen is content.
In conclusion, there still needs to be a lot of work done to health care in the United States. Other nations provide universal health care to their citizens, but this would cause dilemmas in balancing two often conflicting policy goals: providing the public with equitable access to needed pharmaceuticals while controlling the costs. Universal health care probably would not work in the U.S. because our nation is so diverse and our economy is so complex. The system we have now obviously has its problems, and there is a lot of rom for improvement. HMO’s will still create problems for people and their medical bills, but they definitely should be monitored to see that their patients are receiving just treatment.
Until Obama-care, The United States was one of the only developed nations that did not provide some sort of health care for its citizens. To most other nations that do provide healthcare, it is because it is considered a human right that all people should be entitled to. That hasn’t been the case in America, however, where only those who could afford it could have healthcare plans. Those who stand to gain the most from universal healthcare are the already mentioned 45 million americans who currently don’t have any form of healthcare. For many of these individuals, there are many obstacles that prevent them from gaining healthcare. 80% of the 45 million are working class citizens, but either their employer doesn’t offer insurance, or they do but the individual can n...
The U.S. expends far more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet we get fewer benefits, less than ideal health outcomes, and a lot of dissatisfaction manifested by unequal access, the significant numbers of uninsured and underinsured Americans, uneven quality, and unconstrained wastes. The financing of healthcare is also complicated, as there is no single payer system and payment schemes vary across payors and providers.
Health Insurance is one of the nations top problems, the cost is rising for premiums, and many businesses just cannot afford it. As Americans many of us have the luxury of health insurance, but far too many of us have to go without it. This is something that always seems to brought up at congressional debates, but little is done about it. “In 2013 there were 41 million people reported with out health insurance coverage, this is too many considering those people probably were sick at some point through out the year, and they couldn’t afford treatment.” We need to find someway to make sure that every citizen of the United States is able to have affordable healthcare for themselves, and their families.
Americans these days need an affordable universal health insurance from the American government , Can the government give what the people need ? First of all many americans owe the government cause they can’t afford their medications , Second of all is Obama care really is worth it ? , Furthermore the US’s medical System is not working for most of the people who is on medication. US spends far and away more on healthcare than any other. Half of the americans are uninsured by the government. Over Half of the american population hasn’t gotten their Insurance and even if they do they still pay a lot of money for their medication.
Less than a quarter of uninsured Americans believe the Affordable Care Act is a good idea. According to experts, more than 87 million Americans could lose their current health care plan under the Affordable Care Act. This seems to provide enough evidence that the Affordable Care Act is doing the exact opposite of what Democrats promised it would do. On the other hand, this law includes the largest health care tax cut in history for middle class families, helping to make insurance much more affordable for millions of families. The Affordable Care Act has been widely discussed and debated, but remains widely misunderstood.
With the United Nations listing health care as natural born right and the escalating cost of health care America has reached a debatable crisis. Even if you do have insurance it's a finical strain on most families.