Major Healthcare Reform: A Case Study

There has been an astronomical rise in concern about high health care costs among people and members of congress. There is an increased awareness that despite the higher costs, health care system is not producing the better outcomes. And as member of the political system, we do not want health care spending to affect other economic indicators.

Uninsured American’s can shop for free or low cost healthcare coverage. Unfortunately, most the working class are covered by their employer with high deductibles and expensive premiums. The shared-cost creates problems for Americans due to disparities in economic and social class.

Many Americans were led to believe that the introduction of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2009 would put an end to disparities in health care access. While it did improve the situation for a small percentage of the population there are still many Americans who lack access to good quality health care. Health care access in America is determined by money and those in lower socioeconomic groups frequently tend to miss out on adequate care. In a recent health care report by the national health research foundation Kaiser Family Foundation, it was noted “health care disparities remain a persistent problem in the United States, leading to certain groups being at higher risk of being uninsured, having limited access to care, and experiencing poorer quality of care” (Kaiser Family Foundation). The current health care

Health care should not be considered a political argument in America; it is a matter of basic human rights. Something that many people seem to forget is that the US is the only industrialized western nation that lacks a universal health care system. The National Health Care Disparities Report, as well as author and health care worker Nicholas Conley and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), strongly suggest that the US needs a universal health care system. The most secure solution for many problems in America, such as wasted spending on a flawed non-universal health care system and 46.8 million Americans being uninsured, is to organize a national health care program in the US that covers all citizens for medical necessities.

Sicko is an American documentary by Michael Moore which explores the status of health care in America. In my opinion, he has presented a clear-cut viewpoint that American health care is not producing results. Nearly half a hundred million Americans, according to Sicko, are not insured while the rest, who are insured, are often sufferers of insurance company deceit and also red tape. Additionally, Sicko mentions that the United States health care system is placed 37th out of 191 by the W.H.O. with definite health measures, like the neonate death and life probability, equivalent to countries with quite less financial wealth. Interviews are carried out with individuals who supposed they had sufficient coverage but were deprived of care. Previous

In addition to the dismay of many healthcare professionals, patients, and citizens who are uninsured, several flaws about the current healthcare system show the necessity for reform. The three flaws that exacerbate the current healthcare crisis are: the tax code and tax breaks, the lack of preventable care and adequate care of chronic diseases, and administrative costs. A single payer, universal healthcare system can resolve the major flaws of the

Sicko is a documental film made by Michael Moore in 2007. The director is the main speaker in the movie. Moore is a famous American documentary maker who was awarded for several of his works. There was not any special occasion for creation of this film; it looked like the director collected enough facts from different time periods and social groups and decided to reflect the situation in his new project. Moore mentioned some horrible, contradictory cases, they all had similar level of “severity”; there was not any specific event that could be treated as the trigger for the documentary’s creation. All Americans below the upper class be treated as the potential auditory for the Sicko. Moore involved people from different cities and social groups, but all of them were united by the same problem. The topic affects everyone who contact with health insurance

The law that was intended to improve the status quo of health care has, in essence, caused a dangerous paradigm shift in health care costs. Fundamentally, the Affordable Care Act is a failed attempt to reduce health care costs in the United States. The Act was designed to increase affordability of health insurance for extremely low-income families; nevertheless, the Act exponentially increased health insurance costs for the majority of Americans. In America, majority rules-- why should health care be an

“Healthcare Reform 101,” written by Rick Panning (2014), is a wonderful article that describes, in an easy-to-understand language, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law March 23, 2010. The main goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was to provide affordable, quality healthcare to Americans while simultaneously reducing some of the country’s economic problems. Two areas will be covered throughout this paper. The first section will include a summary of the major points and highlights of Panning’s (2014) article, including an introduction to the ACA, goals of the signed legislation, provided coverage, and downfalls of the current healthcare system. The second part will be comprised of a professional

Healthcare disparities are a significant issue in the U.S. with factors such as quality of care, access to care, and insurance playing a role in discrepancies. Statistics have shown that healthcare disparities have improved but are still an issue in the United States. These disparities have been improving throughout history with efforts made by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The leading cause of the disparities is insurance coverage. The current intervention being used is the ACA, which was put into place by President Obama. The ACA has been making advances in decreasing the amount of uninsured Americans and trying to minimize the amount of healthcare disparities. With the advances throughout history there is still a long way to

The US Healthcare system is plagued with a tremendous amount of waste, high costs that are continuing to rise, and low quality, fragmented care.2 The price of health care has been a major topic over the last few years. Health care accounts for almost 18% of the gross domestic product. Blue Cross and Blue Shield set the standard for reimbursement systems when Medicare was created in 1965. This original system paid hospital costs and physician fees retrospectively with no regard for the quality of care provided. This system encouraged higher costs and fees and provided no incentive to control spending. In fact, spending skyrocketed. Over the course of a decade, from 1975 to 1985, Medicare annual spending per beneficiary rose from $472 to $1,579.4 Despite efforts to alter the Medicare reimbursement system, costs continue to climb. The reimbursement system was slow to move away from the fee-for-service model and contributed to this high inflation rate. As healthcare spending increased, financial strain was placed on businesses, individuals, and the government. Medicare spending began taking up more and more of the federal budget, threatening the continuation of the entire program and the ability of the government to help provide access to help for the elderly and disabled.2 These higher healthcare costs do not

Today, the US society confronts the continuous problem of "whether the administration ought to make a noteworthy or a constrained push to give medical coverage to the uninsured" (The Henry J. Keiser Family Foundation 1). On the other hand, no choice has yet got

Health care has been at the forefront of debate and public policy in the United States for decades. Ever since President Theodore Roosevelt proposed health care reform during his 1912 run for president, reform has been a policy position often espoused in American politics (Palmer 1). Certain types of health care reforms have been successfully implemented, such as Social Security in the 1930s, Medicare in the 1960s, and finally the Affordable Care Act in 2010. As the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to provide care for every American, the healthcare law is the closest the United States has ever approached to a single payer system; a health care system that provides universal care to every American. Despite that, current systems within the

Critics have claimed that the ACA overlooked the need to reform the delivery system in our nation so as to constrain its costs and improve its quality. A careful examination of the law, however, shows that it constitutes one of the most aggressive efforts in the history of the nation to address the problems of the delivery system. Just over 5 years ago, on March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. Its enactment may constitute the most important event of the Obama presidency and could fundamentally affect the future of health care in the United States. From a historical perspective, 5 years is a very short time, far too short to assess definitively the

One of the most sensitive subject in the United States today that is most discussed and debated revolves around the issue of our healthcare system. Unlike the many developed countries, the healthcare system in America is not public, meaning that our country cannot provide free or affordable healthcare services to its citizens. So everyone has to pay out of pocket for their treatments or for their visits to the doctors office.Healthcare is one of the most expensive thing in the U.S, our country spends so much money on healthcare than any other country around the world. Over the last decades, no other aspect of the healthcare system has lost its shine as much as aggressive health care. Once considered to be a source of strength and pride, aggressive