Health Care ReformEssay Preview: Health Care ReformReport this essayAbstractHealth Care Reform is the hottest topic in todays news. Health care expenditures are currently 18 percent of GDP and are expected to reach 34 percent by 2040. The costs of health care have risen rapidly and are expected to rise even more in the future. Today, 46 million Americans are uninsured and 25 million are underinsured. If health care cost growth is not sustained, the budget deficit will grow sharply since almost half of current health care spending is covered by Federal, state, and local governments. The health care reform plans proposes to offer affordable, comprehensive and portable coverage. It pledges to control the rising health care cost and improving the quality of care.
SummaryHealth care reform is one of the hottest topics in todays news. The high and rising cost of healthcare is significant issue for people, businesses, and government. Current projections in 2009 estimates that total health care spending contributes to 18 percent of total GDP, 20.3 percent by 2018 and are expected to reach 34 percent by 2040. Figure below shows National Health Expenditures as a Share of GDP, 1980-2040.
According to projections released by economists at the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid, estimates health care spending to rise from $2.4 trillion in 2009 to $4.4 trillion in 2018. An average of $8,160 per person is spent on health care which is twice as much per person in any other developed country. With all this spending, the current system is increasingly inaccessible to nearly 46 million Americans who have are uninsured and 25 million other who are underinsured. The cost of health care is skyrocketing and health insurance premiums have doubled rising to 3.7 times faster than wages in the past 8 years. Soaring medical cost is even affecting the coved who are struggling to cope with the increased cost. Almost half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills today.
The current health care system is more costly and less effective in terms of life expectancy. The rising cost is unsustainable so reform is needed to control the rising cost and improve the access and affordability to Americans. Evidence clearly shows that the key problem with the health care system is its fragmentation. The delivery of insurance and care is undertaken by private insurers, for-profit hospitals, and other players who add cost without adding value. The government pays directly or indirectly for more than half of nations health care. Most of this government spending is accounted for by two social insurance programs known as Medicare and Medicaid. The figure below shows the government insurance programs as percentage of GDP.
The Affordable Care Act increased state and local government spending, resulting in a $19 trillion increase in health savings and reduced overall state and local budget (MBI) payments to help lower the cost of health care.
Poverty is a major factor in our health care system, resulting from high levels of federal and state spending, high rates of education, and high drug prices. In addition, our spending continues to rise because of a growing number of state and local governments, which create conditions for a healthier society. These social costs are further exacerbated when the federal government reduces health insurance. Public and private insurance combined account for more than 20 percent of federal funding for public health care. Federal spending has also increased over time. When the percentage of Americans with a health insurance is combined and states and local government spend more on their health care budgets, health spending on health care will be higher. This raises the cost of healthcare in the future.
[Poverty in health care increases, increases]
Poverty raises social, economic, and environmental costs. However, the current U.S. health care system is broken over the last 40 years. The vast majority of Americans are not in poverty; in fact, the actual health care crisis created by the previous four years has worsened substantially over the past five years.
Poverty affects 1 out of every 4 children in the United States.
When most people are not poor, those in poverty are more likely to be younger women of childbearing ages. Among the 5-year-olds of the 1950s-1960s, the rate of children of poverty in the United States increased from 14% to 30% per year. Nearly 8 out of 10 children of the 20th century went to middle age (the 10th birthday of the child becoming the 40th birthday of the child being the 50th birthday of the child being 20th birthday of the child becoming 50th). These trends continue to be a direct consequence of the United States’ economic meltdown. The decline of the U.S. productivity rate has led to lower wages and reduced income of middle-income families. Additionally, poor wages are contributing disproportionately to the social cost of medical care.
[What would change]
Americans are living in some of the greatest health care savings. We know that for-profit health insurance prices are lower than what they were in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But that’s because there is one small difference. The prices are lower for a given set of procedures. The benefits and costs are the same, while most Americans can’t afford to pay $2.50 for basic, health insurance. While the Affordable Care Act significantly raised spending on family planning and expanded coverage options for low-income Americans, it reduced the size and type of family planning as well. Thus, while the ACA helped low-income Americans get what they wanted, it decreased the number of women who obtained breast cancer screenings. This led to fewer women receiving breast cancer screenings, lower breast cancer awareness and coverage, and an increase in the
-and-total number of abortions.
Americans are living in some of the greatest health care savings. We know that for-profit health insurance prices are lower than what they were in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But that’s because there is one small difference. The prices are lower for a given set of procedures. The benefits and costs are the same, while most Americans can’t afford to pay $2.50 for basic, health insurance. While the Affordable Care Act significantly raised spending on family planning and expanded coverage options for low-income Americans, it reduced the size and type of family planning as well. Thus, while the Affordable Care Act helped low-income Americans get what they wanted, it decreased the number of women who obtained breast cancer screenings. This led to fewer women receiving breast cancer screenings, lower breast cancer awareness and coverage, and an increase in the<#>-and-total number of abortions. The Affordable Care Act would greatly reduce, or end, family planning and abortion coverage, as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. With fewer women and fewer abortions, low-income, uninsured Americans are still more likely to have children than upper-income, working-class taxpayers who provide their insurance. This led to fewer men giving birth to babies or providing care to their mother. Moreover, a family policy (in a small size) often will have to pay more for the coverage offered by a single issuer to offset the cost to Medicaid and the cost to taxpayers who pay health care that is cost-free, low-income or low-income.
Most states expanded coverage for maternity coverage as a way to reduce the costs of mammograms and preventable pregnancy and postpartum complications. This resulted in new insurance companies paying for mammograms and other preventive services that helped save money on expensive care for women and their pregnancy during pregnancy.
One of the key reasons Americans are living longer and healthier, than they were previously, is that the Affordable Care Act introduced new economic incentives to reduce costs. Such incentives reduce taxes on corporations making more than $50,000 per year, and they increase insurance premiums.
More than $1 trillion in spending already is spent at the federal level to improve nutrition, health education and social services. In addition, the federal government contributed to the implementation of many of the nation’s largest nutrition programs, including the Affordable Care Act.
The Affordable Care Act expanded the marketplaces in 29 states along with the District of Columbia to include people who live in metropolitan areas in more than 30 states. Federal and state exchanges are now available nationwide.
Without a reform, the Federal spending on health care as share of GDP will continue to rise. As health care costs increases and the baby boomers retire, we will be facing a long-term imbalance between revenues and spending. If government doesnt increase taxes or cut on other government spending, the United States will experience rapidly rising deficits. The rising deficits will have a very negative impact on our economy as it lowers national savings, raise interest rates, and crowd out investment.
At the moment, President Obama, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, the American Medical Association and Americas Health Insurance plans all agree that a change is needed to the current system. There is little debate that the health care is necessary but a lot of debate on how the change should be done.
History of Health Care Reform in United StatesHealth care has been an important topic for many U.S. Presidents since the turn of the century. Several presidents have attempted and failed to reform the health care. The first serious attempt was made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to establish a national health care program but was quickly opposed by the American Medical Association. Since health care cost accounted for much smaller share of family overall expense, his administration decided to concentrate on addressing other problems they were facing. President Truman was another president who wanted to establish a national plan but this time, he was opposed from within its own party. In fear of the national health care plan will lead to the integration of hospitals, Truman backed off from his plan. Later on, as part of the broader civil rights agenda known as the Great Society, President Johnson managed to get Medicare and Medicated programs to seniors and poor citizens. President Clinton tried introducing the national health care program again but failed because of the administration mismanaged its development and presentation. At present, President Obama pledges to make health care reform a priority to his administration as more and more Americans are uninsured today not to mention skyrocketing costs of care.
Inefficiencies in the Current Health Care SystemAlthough there is much that is right with United States health care system specially the rate of technological innovation we have today, however, the system is weighed down with substantial inefficiencies and market failures. This inefficiency is becoming more costly as the health care sector is becoming a larger fraction of the economy. An example would be the tremendous variation in Medicare spending per enrollee across the states with no obvious evidence of corresponding variations in either medical needs or outcomes. Furthermore, inefficiencies in the current health care system include payment systems that reward medical inputs rather than outcomes, high administrative costs, and inadequate focus on disease prevention. In addition, the imperfections of market in the health insurance market create incentives for socially inadequate levels of coverage. In relative to spending in other countries, U.S. health care spending has risen dramatically in recent decades with no evident gains in relative outcomes and this only suggests that much of the increase is inefficient.
Economic Impact of Current System on Businesses, Employer-sponsored Coverage, and American WagesThe rising cost of health care is impacting all businesses and especially small business. The inability to offer coverage to employees is causing lost of productivity and preventing business growth. It is effecting employer-sponsored coverage and putting them in jeopardy. As costs of premiums continue to increase, employers are having more difficulty providing health care coverage. In the past nine years or so, more employment-based