Associate Level Material
Appendix A: U.S Health Care Timeline

Use the following timeline or create a timeline of your own with eight major events, including the four provided below, from the last 50 years. You may change the dates in the box to match the dates of your events. Include the following in your timeline: Medicare and Medicaid
HIPAA of 1996
State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
Prospective Payment System (PPS)

1955 | In 1955 the then Indian Health Services took a new shape as it was taken away from Department of Interior. It was handed over to H.H.S. I learned from ihs.gov that in the past tribal Indians had to submit their land to get health services from US government. The Indian population could get healthy services and this is how their mortality rate decreased. When the services were reassigned to H.H.S. the Indians got more rights to get health services. | 1965 | Medicare and Medicaid came into being on July 30, 1965 as the Social Security Act got revised by the then President L. B. Johnson. The new healthcare programs are federal in type and are mainly for people of 65 and above. People below 65 may be covered if they have some particular disabilities. With these programs people with low or no income get care and | 1971 | The National Cancer Act Law was enacted by President R. Nixon. This law came as governmental war to overcome cancer. If our government paid no attention to this issue, scientists and doctors could not continue their research to provide us with lot of cancer survivors. It is true some people have lost the battle against cancer but we also have many victors in this field. The fight is going on. | 1983 | Medicare Prospective Payment System (PPS) came into existence in October 1983 when federal law brought in this system. PPS wanted to have control over hospital charges. Each service offered is not given priority for billing; rather the group of diagnosis is taken care of. H.H.S. policy states that PPC helps receivers of Medicare services to get quality services from the hospitals. | 1996-1997 | The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) came into existence on August 21, 1996. It offers a unique characteristic that safeguards health information of patients. People with earlier health conditions may be allowed to change their plans and still maybe allowed to get services. Some limitations will be at work.State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was enacted on August 5, 1997 by president Bill Clinton. It is both federal and state funded. When low income people fail to get private insurance plans while they cannot qualify for Medicaid for going beyond the income limit, they can go for this program. This program comes with more quality services than that of Medicaid. Families may choose to go for submitting monthly fee at small amounts. However, a child with a private insurance plan cannot go for this program. In this case, she has to stay without any | 2001 | In 2001 the Center for Medicare and Medicaid took charge of the Health Care Financing Administration. A person can go on with SSI for 2 years if he/she fails to meet the requirements for Medicare for the time being. The person should be eligible for Social Security Disability in this case. For some particular disease Medicare may be offered without any delay | 2010 | President Obama enacted the Affordable Care Act on March 23 2010. The objective of this law was to reform related to insurance to go on for four years and more regarding the comprehensive aspect of reform. This law has a personal touch of Obama’s mother as Obama said that his mother had to go for dispute with the insurance companies even when she was suffering from cancer and so he dedicated this law to his mother. This was stated in CNN Politics (2010). |

References: Google.com
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