Affordable and Accessible Healthcare in the United States
Instructions:-
Affordable and Accessible Healthcare in the United States
Cost, quality and access to care have been identified as significant contributing factors to the U.S. healthcare system overall. Choose one of these factors and write a two to three page paper addressing the following:
- Describe the historical background and influence on healthcare delivery including benchmark events.
- Examine the impact of current healthcare reform, such as the Affordable Care Act, on this factor.
Your paper should meet the following requirements:
- Be two to three pages in length, not including the cover or reference pages
- Be formatted according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements
- A minimum of four references with associated in-text citations. Two of these sources may be from the class readings, textbook, or lectures, but two must be external. ThenCSU-Global Library is a good place to find these references.
- Use headings to organize the content in your work.
Solution
Affordable and Accessible Healthcare in the United States
The availability and affordable nature of healthcare has always posed a big problem to each and every regime that has taken over the helms of power in the United States and other nations as well. During Obama’s tenure as the President, his government was able to create the Affordable Healthcare Act, a statute that has received a lot of publicity; both positive and negative. The opposition by Republicans and certain factions of industrialists and business owners were at the forefront to claim that the Act was not as ideal for the American Economy as the government may have deemed it to be. As much as this was the most heated and followed debate regarding affordable healthcare in the History of the United States, it was not the first.
History of Affordable Healthcare
Since time immemorial, there have been a lot of questions and arguments regarding the creation and provision of healthcare to all. The poor in the society would be disadvantaged as the majority of them would not be able to afford the healthcare and therefore would not be able to get any form of assistance (Hall & Lord, 2014). In the 1890s, a group of physicians met and agreed that there could be an easy way to solve this issue. The physicians agreed to provide prepaid health care to their patients, thereby offsetting the costs of healthcare and being able to provide for the less fortunate (State Implement Health Reforms, 2011).
The practice caught on, and other organisations joined the fray. Soon enough, insurance companies began offering health insurance, which in reality was just prepaid healthcare but took the unnecessary responsibility of handling the accounts from the Physicians and handed it over to the insurance companies (Hall & Lord, 2014). In turn, this created a more fluid and acceptable means to provide affordable healthcare to the masses at much lower costs than individual means could provide and allow. The public began embracing the practice of health insurance, and it soon grew. With the added acceptance from the public came more pressure to the government to find a system where the less fortunate who could not afford the rather high insurance premiums offered by private companies, could at least be able to access certain vital services from the healthcare providers (Friedman & Gostin, 2016; Kleinberg, 2016).
After decades of these demands, the government finally produced healthcare legislation that would, in theory, have assisted in the management and protection of the right to healthcare for every citizen of the United States. The most notable of these legislations is the Affordable Healthcare Act, which was designed as a system to the right the wrongs of Medicaid. Commonly referred to as ObamaCare, the Act was aimed at bridging the gap of health insurance for the elderly and the disadvantaged (Hall & Lord, 2014; Tobias, 2014; University of California San Francisco, 2016). It was not without blame, as there was still a large number of Americans who could not be covered by ObamaCare. Furthermore, Big industries viewed it as bad for business.
Regardless of this, the Act and Health Insurance at large has played a significant role in the proper management of health care among Americans (Friedman & Gostin, 2016). Statistics show that over 65% of Americans are covered by some form of health insurance. That means more than half of the citizens of America have access to affordable healthcare. The targets should be higher than this, but the number is still quite significant. In this way, the healthcare system can be said to be efficiently growing to be able to support each and every American.
Conclusion
The topic of affordable health care shall always be controversial. However, the figures show that there is a great improvement on both the quality and availability of healthcare to the majority of Americans. A lot still needs to be done. But the steps taken are a beacon of hope towards a better America.
References
Friedman, E. A., & Gostin, L. A. (2016). The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Achieving the Vision of Global Health with Justice. The Georgia Public Policy Review, 21(1).
Hall, M. A., & Lord, R. (2014). Obamacare: what the Affordable Care Act means for patients and physicians. Center for Bioethics Health and Society.
Kleinberg, K. A. (2016). Rise of the Intelligent Machines in Healthcare. Las Vegas: HIMMS.
State Implement Health Reforms. (2011). Affordable Care Act: A brief Summary. Washington D.C: National Conference of State Legislatures.
Tobias, C. (2014). The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States. Washington DC: Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee.
University of California San Francisco. (2016). Big Data, Analytics & Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Healthcare is Here. San Francisco: University of California San Francisco.