Our health care system is currently undergoing a much needed reform. We all too often hear about the uninsured and underinsured, how many millions of Americans are going without. What we do not hear about is how implementing new Health IT strategies we will help reform the health care system as well. We are all aware of the governments current financial situation but we cannot get anywhere without spending first. What are some of the major milestones in the development and advancement of Health IT?
Looking back to look forward: health care reform:. Retrieved December 16, 2010, from KPLU News Web site: http://www.kplu.org/health_care_script.html Federal Trade Commission, & Department of Justice. (2004). Improving health care: a dose of competition. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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.
Unfortunately many parts of the bill, such as the website to sign up applicants, has failed and many states have rejected the proposed changes in infrastructure that makes the bill possible. The main purpose of this reform is to expand Medicaid coverage, hold insurance companies accountable for rising costs, lower overall health care costs, guarantee more choice of physicians for patients, and give quality healthcare to all Americans (Troy 21). Throughout the enactment of this bill, only one of these promises has been upheld, the expansion of Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed and replaced with a single-payer system because Obamacare created ‘death panels’ for aging and disabled Americans, has failed to allow many who wanted to keep their current health coverage to do so, many people’s previous physician is not covered under Obamacare, and ObamaCare is failing on Obama’s main promise, lowering the overall cost of healthcare while giving universal coverage. In the 2012 Presidential Debates over the Affordable Care Act President Barack Obama said “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But this, in fact, is not the case.
4 Nov. 2013. Sebelius, Kathleen. "Health Care Reform Lets States Make Health Care Decisions." Health Care Legislation. 10 Feb. 2011: n. pag.
In September 2013, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 46.3 million (15.4% of the population) did not have health insurance in 2012 ( Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States). The United States is one of the only entirely developed countries in the world who does not provide free healthcare coverage as a right to its citizens. No one in the richest nation on Earth should be without healthcare. The United States is ranked number one in per capita health care expenditures, according to the World Health Organization (Health Expenditures Series). Providing free healthcare for U.S. citizens would put an end to medical bankruptcies, improve public health, and decrease overall health care spending.
Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/rights/ U.S. Government Site for Medicare, (2014). The affordable care act and medicare. Retrieved from website: http://www.medicare.gov/about-us/affordable-care-act/affordable-care-act.html Wechsler, J. (2012, February). Health reform promises expanded drug coverage through ACOs, exchanges, value-based initiatives.
There were constant error messages popping up from the start of the website, so users were not having much success getting signed up for the program. It has also been reported that Obama’s promise, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.” was false. Participators of the program stated that they had to cancel their doctor of choice and find a new doctor that was covered under the Obamacare health plan. There... ... middle of paper ... ... president of the United States, who claimed that it was wrong to involve one’s self with lobbyists (A Pattern Of Concerns | Not Fit To Be Commander in Chief 1). In conclusion, Barack Obama has not had what it takes to get the country back in the shape it needs to be in.
Everybody loved the idea of healthcare reform, but are they willing to pay the price that it will cost? When making a bill such as this, every option must be open for discussion and every idea must be on the table. From the beginning, he was getting disapproval from even inside his own West wing. The White House had a debate about whether they should actually go forward with it, because no president had ever made headway on comprehensive health care reform. First, healthcare was not an option, but later, they decided just to scale healthcare back.
Today, healthcare has become a political issue between democrats and republicans which has made the problem even harder to solve. As we all are familiar with our government’s last shutdown and how much it hurt to our economy. One of the biggest reasons for this shutdown was due to disagreements between both parties over funding or defunding the Obama Care. Growing Demand for Health Care As a result of improved technology and advance medical facilities these days, life expectancy rate has been increased. People are living longer than they used they used to be, especially in the developed nations.