The Importance Of Health Care

1768 Words4 Pages

“A lot of what we "know" about other nations ' approach to health care is simply myth.” (Reid, 2013) Mr. T Reid said this quote best. We simply do not know enough about healthcare to form a judicious opinion on it. Healthcare is the number one field that is always changing and the changes are so vast that most cannot keep up with them. Many American’s, myself included have a hard time understanding the altering healthcare field and are always struggling to keep up with the modifications. “Prior to 1800, medicine in the United States was a “family affair.” (Mark David, 1999) In the 1800’s when a family member was ill the family would band together to help the ill person with healing. Women were generally expected to take care of the ill …show more content…

We no longer had to wait for a doctor to come our house or have family member care for us, we now had hospitals to go when we were ill, we had doctors with degrees and nurses to attend to our needs but how would we pay for such things? In the 1930’s there was a great rise in healthcare costs. At this time most all doctors were paid by a “fee-for-service” program. New insurance plans like Blue Cross and Blue Shield of America offered members to pay for the costs of being hospitalized and for the treatment the physician had given to them. The AHA decided to take a role in group hospitalization plans and during the World War II a new medical plan was started by a man named Henry J Kaiser, he offered his employees’ a pre-paid medical insurance plan. This is what paved the road to what know how as a Healthcare Maintenance Organization or an HMO. Healthcare advancements caused increasing healthcare costs. The Baby Boomers received a higher level of medical care during the 1950’s because of all of new the healthcare advancements. New X-ray machines, lifesaving drugs, vaccinations, antibiotics like penicillin, inoculations against diseases, therapists, laboratory blood testing’s, and specialists all paved a way to new preventative care. With these new advancements the United States noticed a raise in life-span but hardships for the American people that had spent so much …show more content…

Capitation is “a system that paid doctors a set fee from which they had to care for all of their patients, the sick and the well.” (Mark David, 1999) Managed care became in existence and produced changes in the consumer’s roles in the healthcare field it caused a great emphasis on preventive medicine and being accountable for your own health. By the 1990’s communications added more consumer advancements offering information through the World Wide Web. This grew into an alternative medication for most Americans. Computers allowed patients to practice “telemedicine” which is a system that used the Internet so that patients could be diagnosed and sometimes even treated by doctors at a distance. On March 23rd, 2010 President Brock Obama signed a law called the Affordable Care Act the law was upheld in the Supreme Court on June 28th, 2012. What is the Affordable Care Act and why is it so important to American’s? The Affordable Care Act is a new healthcare reform law in the United States that is nick named Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act is a complex piece of legislation it attempts to help our healthcare system and provides Americans with affordable

Open Document