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Plan for universal healthcare
Affordable health care for everyone
Plan for universal healthcare
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The typical middle class American family has four people, two children and two working adults. The combined income of the household amounts to an average net pay of $84,431 a year and $60,000 of it is spent on everyday expenses (United States Census Bureau). Health care in the United States is currently a free-market in which private companies charge customers for their medical coverage. In the current system, it costs about $8,400 per household for medical coverage in a year (Rising Health Care Costs). That only leaves about $16,000 for emergency money or money used for other recreational activities. The typical middle class American families would also have other luxuries that working class families would not have, and they lack some of the luxuries that upper class families have. These numbers would change a little with universal health care coverage because there would not be $8,400 allotted for health insurance, however,the salaries would be less due to an increase in taxestaken out used to help pay for universal insurance. The middle class families would not be impacted as much as working class families who struggle to make it through the month on a tight budget. Not all employers pay for insurance for their employees and those people need to go through a different company in order to have insurance. This probability could cost the family extra, and would add to their expenses. Other companies pay for all insurance claims needed by the employee and only have them pay off a small deductible. It depends on the employer, but if there was the passage of the universal Maldonado 2 health care act, all people would have the same basic coverage along with any extra coverage that they choose to pay for. Currently, insured Americans ... ... middle of paper ... ...late the economy and provide jobs for people. Works Cited Ballaro, Beverly. Sprague, Nancy. “Point: The United States Needs a Single-Payer Health Insurance System.” Points of View: Universal Health Care. (2013): 1. Points of View Reference Center. Web 9 March 2014. 2c7e887f652c%40sessionmgr113&vid=4&hid=114>. Emanuel, Ezekiel, Dr. "Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel on Universal Health Care." Interview by David Brancaccio. NOW on the News PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, 13 Apr. 2007. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. . "Rising Health Care Costs." America's Health Insurance Plans. Web. 10 May 2014. . "United States Census Bureau." State Median Income. Web. 9 May 2014. .
breadwinners of the family and rely on little assistance from others to make ends meet. Paycheck
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
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.
In 2010, President Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act in order to bring reform to the current healthcare system. The law was designed to provide healthcare coverage for people that did not have access to healthcare, improve the quality of the types of healthcare provided, and contain costs (HHS, 2014). Some of the features of the law are:
Luckily under the new health care reform law, most people will receive help paying for their healthcare premiums and cost-sharing expenses that people with insurance have to pay out of pocket for doctor visits, and prescription medicine. Families and individuals will be able to receive this assistance with incomes between one hundred and four hundred percent of the federal poverty line. One hundred to four hundred percent makes up at about $23,000 to $94,000 a year assume this is for a family of four.
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...
Most people rely on their employers to provide them with health insurance, but with many health care is not available through the employers. Many small businesses can simply not afford the high cost of health care, or it may be available, but the employee needs to pay the entire premiums. A lot of employers are utilizing part time employees, the part time employees are usually not qualified for benefits, like health insurance. This is very unfortunate for these part timer’s not only because they will not get benefits such as health insurance, but also they probably have a slim chance of going full time because of the health insurance dilemma. Business owner’s need to assess what is good for them financially, and having plenty of part time employees who do not require insurance is probably the most cost effective method to keep the Business up and running.
Forbes takes a look at the changes in healthcare costs. In 1958 health costs were $134 which on average is about 118 hours of work. In 2012, health expenses were $8,953.00. It would take 467 hours to cover health care expenses. That’s a lot for someone trying to achieve the American dream, don’t you think?
Universal Health care or more commonly referred to as National Healthcare began in the 1880’s in Germany. (Mcguigan) Every employee and employer in the country paid in a percent into the local health bureaus. Then the health bureaus would distribute the money to the doctor offices when you visit. If this bill is passed this would be the way it would work. For example if they were going to have you pay 10% if you made a 1,000 dollars and someone else made five hundred a week you would pay one hundred dollars and the other person would pay fifty dollars. Even though the healthcare coverage would be the same for you and them you end up paying more than the other person. In a way you would end up paying for their coverage. This is good depending on your pay class if you’re in the upper end of the spectrum you are getting screwed, but in the lower end of the spectrum it’s the best thing to happen.
The steady rise of healthcare costs and the ever increasing cost of health insurance premiums are making it harder and harder for employers to pay healthcare premiums for their employees. In the past, it was almost a given that employers picked up the tab for health insurance coverage. The health coverage was usually exceptional with little or no money paid out of pocket by the individual for the insurance premiums. Those appear to be the “good old days”, with fewer and fewer employers shelling out money for health insurance premiums and demanding a larger percentage to be paid by the employee. Other employers are simply unable to financially provide healthcare coverage for their employees and have stopped all together.
In order to fully understand the uninsured and underinsured problem that hospital administrators face the cause must be examined. The health outcomes of uninsured individuals are generally worse than those who are insured. Uninsured persons are more likely to experience avoidable hospitalizations, diagnosed at later stages of disease, hospitalized on an emergency or urgent basis, and more seriously ill upon hospitalization (Simpson, 2002) Because the uninsured often lack an ongoing relationship with a health-care provider, they are less likely to receive preventive care and diagnostic tests (Kemper, 2002). Many corporations balance their budget through cost cuts and other moves, but have been slammed with an increasing load of uninsured patients, coupled with reduced payments from government and private insurance programs. In 2000, 564,476 uninsured patients came through Health and Hospitals Corporations health care centers, a 30 percent increase from 1996. In the same period, Congress reduced Medicare reimbursements to hospitals, while Medicaid reimbursements to primary care clinics remained basicall...
Later, another panel member argued that the purpose of health insurance is not to insure everyone. It should be provided to only cover catastrophic health conditions. Today, not only does health insurance cover catastrophic events, but also there are limits on the amount of out-of-pocket health care costs for essential health care (The White House, 2016). Also, most out-of-pocket costs have been eliminated for preventative care (The White House,
Throughout the years, universal health care has certainly been a debatable topic among Americans, the debate being whether we should stay true to the current system of private health insurance companies, covering only those wealthy enough to afford it, or if we should have a government-run system that covers all Americans. Currently, there are two programs to help support those without health insurance: Medicare and Medicaid. They are both government-sponsored programs designed to help cover healthcare costs. The first, Medicare, is a federal program that is attached to Social Security and is made readily available to all U.S. citizens of or above the age 65 and also the disabled. The other, Medicaid, is a joint federal and state program that helps low-income individuals and families pay for the medical costs and long-term care. It requires more nitty-gritty details than only being of a certain age; these details are determined by each individual state. Both programs work together to help provide coverage for the elderly and the poor. Unfortunately the rest of the population, over 45 million Americans, are left uninsured. Without changes in our policy, there will be a growing number of people, mainly under the age of 65, which will lack health insurance. The United States government should provide universal health care to its people, as proven by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency that provides valid economic data, who estimate that the average number of nonelderly people alone that are uninsured will rise from about 45 million in 2009 to about 54 million in 2019. This is not anything new; again, health care has been a problem for years, beginning in the 1930s during the great...
Obama Affordable Care Act presents a reasonable approach to effectively address this challange by building on the current system. This new policy will implement multiple strategies that include strengthening empolyer-based coverage (pay or play), expanding and funding public coverage, and creating a new national purchasing pool offering a range of health plan options for individuals and businesses. Although expanding pulic coverage sounds a great way to cover a huge number of people, it will impose two problems. The first one will be obtaining enough funding resorces, and second will be providing equal and fair health care services to all Americans. Otherwise this will be a different form of socializing medicine where beneficiaries will have very lousy insurane that is not accepted by many healthcare providers and will leave people on a long waiting lists to get any medical service.
As of 2013 data, the US per capita government expenditure was $4307 while total per capita expenditure on health spending was $9146, which is 17.1 percent of the GDP (2013) for the total expenditure on health. The annual rate of growth in per capita government spending on healthcare has been roughly 5.1 percent over the past thirty years (WHO, 2015). This rate of spending on health care growing faster than the economy for many years creates challenges ...