...health care systems today. The discussion indicates that no current health care system will adequately control costs over time. The basic systems are then compared with the conclusion that there is no good answer to the issue of cost control and equitability in America yet, but a change may be made in spite of the lack of surety. | Introduction One of the biggest issues facing Americans today is health care costs with respect to medical insurance and the increased liability Federal taxpayers are subject to for the funding of current nationalized health care programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and mandated emergency care. We see models throughout the world, especially in Europe, that look appealing to some Americans, so there have been many champions of reforms that mimic those arrangements. Herein we will define what nationalized and privatized systems consist of, talk about the economics of health care, and discuss some advantages and disadvantages of each arrangement. To quantify the problems that America faces today let us look at a few key statistics. The United States has seen health care costs increase 131% from 1999 to 2007, and there seems to be no respite on the horizon (KaiserEDU, 2010). The United States recently paid 16% of its GDP per capita for health care expenditures, while western European countries spent about 9-11% of their GDP on health care. All countries are facing ballooning medical costs: for example, American and European systems are increasingly...
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...The high increase in the cost of health care has left many Americans struggling to pay their medical bills. Workers are complaining they are not able to afford the high premiums for health insurance. Many employers are cutting back as well as doing away with health benefits, which are causing millions of more people to be in the uninsured position. With programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government and state are lacking to meet the increasing costs. In the United States, the health care costs are a lot higher than other advanced nation. According to The Common Wealth Fund, the number of uninsured went from “39.8 million to 43.6 million,” a 9.5 percent jump, from the year 2000 to 2002. (Davis, 2004) “Rising health care costs are a problem for all Americans, but they weigh especially heavily on uninsured and “underinsured” individuals, who pay much of the cost of their health care directly out-of-pocket.” (The Common Wealth Fund, 2004) The higher the costs are to patients, will result in the underuse of suitable care and cause a great financial burden on the sick. After some thoroughly research, I have found that the Single-Payer Health System is the way for the future in the United States. We are no longer able to afford and/or tolerate careless spending on care that is not beneficial to patients or the repeat of over costly and unnecessary procedures. Below is a chart from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, showing the number of persons without...
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...Mississippi Medical Center School of Nursing Define the problem and assemble the evidence Too many Veterans in the United States lack health insurance and are ineligible to receive care provided by the Veteran’s Health Administration. According to American Community Survey (ACS) conducted in 2010, one in 10 of the nation’s 12.5 million veterans under the age of 65 is uninsured. A veteran is defined by federal law as any person who served for any length of time in any military service branch. Contrary to the presumption of most, not all veterans qualify for free healthcare through the Department of Veteran Affairs. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) operates as a branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs and is the largest health system in the nation. It is recognized for its commitment to providing high-quality population specific healthcare. The VHA also works closely with academic medical centers across the nation. Haley and Kenney (2012) identify eligibility for health care provided by the VHA as being on veteran status, service-connected disabilities and income level. Other factors include demographic location and cost sharing requirements. Health insurance coverage for veterans as with other groups of nonelderly adults has heavy dependence on access to employer sponsored insurance (ESI) and the costs of obtaining it. It must also be considered that the majority of states in our nation deny Medicaid coverage to nondisabled adults without dependent children. Medicaid...
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...Healthcare in America B. Powers ENGL103-1204B-01: Composition: Writing and Research Colorado Technical University December 24, 2012 Improving the access and affordability of health insurance coverage for all Americans should be a primary concern for those who help create the laws of the land. At this date, there are roughly 44 million Americans without any type of healthcare coverage. Another 38 million people have inadequate health insurance (PBS, 2012). What this all means is that the people who need it the most are putting off seeing a doctor until last moment and then usually end up visiting an emergency room. If they cannot pay for the visit, the cost of that ER visit falls back on the taxpayers, people who have health insurance coverage, and the Federal Government. The young, under the age of nineteen, are usually covered by Medicaid and the elderly, 65 and up, are usually covered by Medicare. The people lost in the middle are mainly those aged 19-64, who are uninsured and do what they can to keep themselves healthy. When that does not work, the local health departments and emergency rooms are expected to take up the slack. Of those who may have health insurance coverage, that coverage comes through their employer. The people who have insurance through their employer make up about 56% of the population American workers, while about 11% have privately purchased insurance (Jovanovic, et. al., 2003). The people who do not have traditional jobs such as those who work...
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...the 20th century, several United States presidents have faced challenges in passing national health reform into law. Before the ACA was enacted, national health reform proposals under different governments in the United States faced strong opposition from various stakeholders and multiple interest groups. Therefore, the enactment of the ACA is revolutionary healthcare reform in the history of the United States. Healthcare insurance is a program that assists in paying medical expenses through privately purchased insurance or social welfare programs. In other words, health insurance is a system that provides protection against health costs. This newly legislated healthcare reform offers health insurance for all Americans and legal residents in the United States. Furthermore, the law was enacted to control the constant increase of healthcare costs as well as improving the healthcare delivery system in the...
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...|The Case For Single Payer, Universal Health Care For The United States | | | | | | | | | |Nicole Jones | |April 2011 | |HS 544 Health Policy and Economics | |Fowler | | | Table Of Contents Page Section 1: Executive Summary …………………………………………….. 3 Section 2: Introduction …………………………………………….. 4 Section 3: Literature Review ……………………………………………… 5 Section 4: Problem Analysis ……………………………………………… 10 Section 5: Solutions and Implementations ………………………………………… 17 Section 6: Justification ……………………………………………… 18 Section 7: References ……………………………………………… 20 Executive Summary Almost four decades ago, Canada and the United States had very similar health care systems. Today, they are very different. The...
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...Single Payer Health Care System Purpose – The focus of this research is to identify, analyze and evaluate a type of health care system called Single Payer Health Care System by finding answers to the following questions. Health care is one of the basic necessities that a government should provide to its citizens. Single Payer Health Care systems are catered towards the well-being of its citizens that regard people’s health as their main priority. What is a single-payer health care system? Single-payer national health insurance, also known as “Medicare for all,” is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health care financing, but the delivery of care remains largely in private hands. Under a single-payer system, all residents of a country would be covered for all medically necessary services, including doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. The program would have a single public system of administration, eliminating the present highly expensive multiple, fragmented, and duplicative system operated by different government agencies and private hospitals. The whole operation would be paid by a combination of present Medicare and Medicaid expenditures, existing state and local expenditures for health services, mandated employer contributions, and additional tax revenues equal to the amounts now spent by citizens out of pocket, savings obtained...
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...Leno; a Democrat from the city of San Francisco and presented in March 2011 as The California Universal Health Care Act. This landmark legislation establishes a modern universal health care system to cover every California resident with comprehensive benefits for life, building upon the well-tested principles of our popular Medicare program that American seniors have relied on for decades. SB 810 provides universal care without increasing overall health care spending in California (One-care 2011). Currently residents of the state of California are either privately insured through employer benefit, private pay, or enrolled in either the Medi-cal or Healthy Families Program and a large percentage are without health insurance. SB 810 is a “Medicare for All” style single-payer health care reform plan. Single-payer is a term used to describe a type of financing system. It refers to one entity acting as administrator, or “payer.”(Mclaughlin & Mclaughlin, 2008). California currently spends $200 billion annually on a fragmented, inefficient health care system that wastes 30% of every dollar on administration. Under Senate Bill 810, that wasteful spending is eliminated. The bill creates no new spending, and in fact, studies show that the state would save $8 billion in the first year under this single-payer health care plan. (San Francisco...
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...Health Care System Crisis As the world-famous scholar Stanton Mehr explains “The way health insurance works is large groups of people pay relatively small amounts of money into a fund, which pays the health costs for the entire group. The idea is that most contributors to this pool are healthy people who help pay the costs for the few who are sick (Is Our Health-Care System Sick?”). Insurance is a critical element in the health care of Americans. Millions of people are going without health care, and billions of dollars are being wasted. Lack of access to affordable health insurance and rising health costs are the problems of the health care system in America. Before 1920, doctors didn’t know enough about diseases to provide useful care to sick people therefore, they didn’t charge much. Only a few big employers offered health insurance, and everyone else paid out of their own pockets. When doctors learned more about diseases and effective treatments, they charged people more- more than what they can afford. To add on to the costs, doctors took advantage of the new medical technology and treated people in hospitals. To ease the health care problem, various plans were combined under the auspices of the American Hospital (AHA) and became known as Blue Cross. According to Goda, “Blue Cross insurance was considered desirable because they provided benefits to people in need, benefits from special state-sponsored legislation that made them tax-exempt and nonprofit corporations” (Goda...
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...Health care reform in the United States has a long history. Reforms have often been proposed but have rarely been accomplished. In 2010, landmark reform was passed through two federal statutes enacted in 2010: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), signed March 23, 2010, and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 , which amended the PPACA and became law on March 30, 2010. Future reforms and ideas continue to be proposed, with notable arguments including a single-payer system and a reduction in fee-for-service medical care. The PPACA includes a new agency, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which is intended to research reform ideas through pilot projects. ------------------------------------------------- History of national reform efforts Here is a summary of reform achievements at the national level in the United States. * 1965 President Lyndon Johnson enacted legislation that introduced Medicare, covering both hospital and general medical insurance for senior citizens paid for by a Federal employment tax over the working life of the retiree, and Medicaid permitted the Federal government to partially fund a program for the poor, with the program managed and co-financed by the individual states. * 1985 The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) amended the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to give some employees the ability to continue health insurance coverage after...
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...Full draft The United States spends 17.6 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on healthcare each year (Kane, 2012), this amounts to 17.6 cents of every U.S. dollar. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an economic group comprised of 34 member nations including the United States. The OECD average is between 6 and 8 percent GDP spent on healthcare. Among OECD nations the U.S. scores below average in almost all areas of healthcare, despite spending 2 ½ times more of its economy on the health industry.There are many reasons for this and just as many proposed solutions. I will address three potential solutions here. These are price variations for services, bureaucratic waste, and prescription oversite. Price variation is a substantial part of why healthcare costs so much in the United States. Prices for the same procedure vary by hospital, region, provider and insurer. For the first example, we will look at the cost of a lower joint replacement. According to a Washington Post article (Kliff and Keating, Ye2013r) the price in Virginia varies from $25,000 to $117,000. While in Texas, two hospitals that are 5 miles apart range from $42,632 to $160,832. The second example comes from two hospitals in New York City, which have a price variation of 321% for treating complicated cases of asthma and bronchitis. The difference is $34,310 compared to $8,159. (Kliff and Keating, Ye2013r) Other countries have developed a set fee schedule to address...
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...the most productive economy, and the most powerful military in the world. So, my question is, why wouldn’t a superpower like the U.S. provide its citizens with a universal healthcare system? Of the 25 healthiest nations in the world it is the only one without it. With an estimated 45 million people in the U.S uninsured, it baffles my mind that the so called “greatest nation” still does not have this system. I personally all persons should have the right to be provided with health coverage, and that our nation should be obligated to provide it to us. During th (Thibodeaux, 2010)ese next few pages I will be discussing what a universal health care system entails, how it is provided, and its advantages and disadvantages....
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...Nearly the entire developed world has adopted the system of Universal Health Care, including Europe, the powerhouses of Asia, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The United States (U.S.) is not one of them. Funded through taxes and run by the government, health care proves vital to all countries across the world. Unlike other first world countries, the U.S. falls behind in attempts to providing a single-payer health system, a type of Universal Health Care. Health care affordability continue to drastically decrease for United States citizens, becoming less affordable due to its high costs. Other first world countries are able to provide their population with adequate amounts of medical attention without the high expenses like the current system...
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... 2. Compare the UCR and CPR payment systems? UCR and CPR: Both or methods of payment within the type of tradition retrospective payment system. Both or based on data from past claims. Private Insurance companies use the UCR and Medicare uses the CPR. 3. Describe the two purposes of managed care? The two (2) purposes of Manage care are to control and reduce c\ost while ensuring continuing quality of care. 4. Why have many insurers replaced retrospective health insurance plans with group plans such as HMOs and PPOs? Provider get paid up front with controlled cost while providing quality care no risk, they get paid for level 1,2, or 3 preset price and no risk for Insurance companies. 5. What are advantages of capitated payments for providers and payers? The provider has a guaranteed customer base and the third party payer know the exact cost of the healthcare group payment. 6. Describe the major benefits of episode-of-care reimbursement according to its advocates and the major concern s about episode of care reimbursement expressed by its critics? The benefit is for the provider their paid upfront for all services provided over period of time or specific amount of days. They can’t add any individual fees or charges. The Insurance company/administrators are predicting or making healthcare decision rather than the Doctor. 7. How do their-party payers set per diem payment rates? Third-party payer set per diem using historical data. Total...
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...Comparing the U.S. and Canadian Health Care Systems In discussions of health care reform, the Canadian system is often held up as a possible model for the U.S. The two countries' health care systems are very different-Canada has a single-payer, mostly publicly-funded system, while the U.S. has a multi-payer, heavily private system-but the countries appear to be culturally similar, suggesting that it might be possible for the U.S. to adopt the Canadian system. Much of the appeal of the Canadian system is that it seems to do more for less. Canada provides universal access to health care for its citizens, while nearly one in five non-elderly Americans is uninsured. Canada spends far less of its GDP on health care (10.4 percent, ver-sus 16 percent in the U.S.) yet performs better than the U.S. on two commonly cited health outcome measures, the infant mortality rate and life expectancy. In "Health Status, Health Care, and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S.," (NBER Working Paper 13429) June O'Neill and Dave M. O'Neill take a closer look at the performance of the U.S. and Canadian health care systems. The authors examine whether the Canadian system delivers better health outcomes and distributes health resources more equitably than the U.S. system. The authors begin by examining the evidence on health outcomes. They note that the infant mortality rate and life expectancy are affected by many factors other than the health care system. For example, low birthweight-a phenomenon known to...
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