The Future of Health Care Delivery
More than 48 million people in the United States are without health insurance.
In 2010, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act were signed into law by President Obama. The ACA is said to be the biggest change in healthcare since Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 is Obama’s plan for affordable healthcare insurance coverage and improved access to care. (Davis) This will be a long process due to the political and practical obstacles, but will have an effect on everyone. The ACA will start to provide coverage at different times in each state, which will depend on where they live and which party controls their statehouse. At the moment, Massachusetts provides coverage to nearly all residents. Court’s decision to make the ACA’s Medicaid expansion voluntary and Republican states opposition, means coverage expansion will be slower.
As of February 2013, only 6 states with Republican governors had committed to accepting federal funding to expand Medicaid to all residents. As of June 2013, 26 states supported the Medicaid expansion. Most of the states not supporting the Medicaid expansion were in the south, and had the reasoning that the state could “simply not afford it”. It was found that the United States spends more on health care than any other country, but in result has worse outcomes on most measures of health. The Institute of Medicine reports a reason Americans are so unhealthy is because of the large uninsured population and limited access to care.
The most influential changing forces would be political, economic, and social/demographic forces. The social factors that influence change and shape the Affordable Care Act are more elderly...
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...re include limited resources and primary care must be central place in the delivery of health services. I think both of these models will work by reforming the structure of health care.
Works Cited
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Davis, Karen, and Melinda Abrams. "How the Affordable Care Act Will Strengthen The
Nation's Primary Care Foundation." PMC. 26 Oct. 2011. J Gen Intern Med. .
http://www.pcpcc.org/about/medical-home
One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
According to Harry A. Sultz and Kristina M. Young, the authors of our textbook Health Care USA, medical care in the United States is a $2.5 Trillion industry (xvii). This industry is so large that “the U.S. health care system is the world’s eighth
The aim of affordable care act (ACA) was to extend health insurance coverage to around 15% of US population who lack it. These include people with no coverage from their employers and don’t have coverage by US health programs like Medicaid (Retrieved from, https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/). To achieve this, the law required all Americans to have health insurance which is a reason of controversy because, it was inappropriate intrusion of government into the massive health care industry and insult to personal liberty. To make health care more affordable subsidies are offered and the cost of the insurance was supposed to be reduced by bringing younger, healthier people to the health insurance system. This could be controversial, if older, sicker people who need the coverage most enter the market but younger group decline to do so. The insurance pool will be unbalanced and the cost of coverage will rise correspondingly.
The U.S. Health Care System: An International Perspective - DPEAFLCIO. (2014). Retrieved June 04, 2016, from http://dpeaflcio.org/programs-publications/issue-fact-sheets/the-u-s-health-care-system-an-international-perspective/
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:
Kovner, A.R & Knickman, J.R (2011) Jonas & Kovner’s Health Care Delivery in the United States, 10th Edition. New York: Springer Publishing.
Despite the established health care facilities in the United States, most citizens do not have access to proper medical care. We must appreciate from the very onset that a healthy and strong nation must have a proper health care system. Such a health system should be available and affordable to all. The cost of health services is high. In fact, the ...
Niles, N. J. (2011). Basics of the U.S. health care system. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
Many changes in health care insurance have been made to increase the amount of individuals with health insurance coverage. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2010 in efforts to help solve some of the biggest issues that Americans faced with health care and its availability (The White House, 2016). As of today, more than 9 out of 10 Americans have health insurance (The White House, 2016). This means that 20 million people have gained health insurance since the ACA was enacted (The White House, 2016).
Shi, L., & Singh, D. A. (2008). Delivering health care in America a system approach (4th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Bartlett and Jones.
The U.S. healthcare system is very complex in structure hence it can be appraised with diverse perspectives. From one viewpoint it is described as the most unparalleled health care system in the world, what with the cutting-edge medical technology, the high quality human resources, and the constantly-modernized facilities that are symbolic of the system. This is in addition to the proliferation of innovations aimed at increasing life expectancy and enhancing the quality of life as well as diagnostic and treatment options. At the other extreme are the fair criticisms of the system as being fragmented, inefficient and costly. What are the problems with the U.S. healthcare system? These are the questions this opinion paper tries to propound.
Reforming the health care delivery system to progress the quality and value of care is indispensable to addressing the ever-increasing costs, poor quality, and increasing numbers of Americans without health insurance coverage. What is more, reforms should improve access to the right care at the right time in the right setting. They should keep people healthy and prevent common, preventable impediments of illnesses to the greatest extent possible. Thoughtfully assembled reforms would support greater access to health-improving care, in contrast to the current system, which encourages more tests, procedures, and treatments that are either
The US health system has both considerable strengths and notable weaknesses. With a large and well-trained health workforce, access to a wide range of high-quality medical specialists as well as secondary and tertiary institutions, patient outcomes are among the best in the world. But the US also suffers from incomplete coverage of its population, and health expenditure levels per person far exceed all other countries. Poor measures on many objective and subjective indicators of quality and outcomes plague the US health care system. In addition, an unequal distribution of resources across the country and among different population groups results in poor access to care for many citizens. Efforts to provide comprehensive, national health insurance in the United States go back to the Great Depression, and nearly every president since Harry S. Truman has proposed some form of national health insurance.
Shi, L., & Singh, D. (2012). Delivering health care in America: a system approach. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
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 ...