...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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...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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...very unlikely. The new healthcare reform bill that was recently passed under Obama’s administration anticipates covering 30 more million of the uninsured (Riegelman, 2010). However, this bill does not offer universal healthcare. While excellent medical care is available in the United States, the rising cost and the U.S. health care delivery system present many challenges for the consumer and lawmakers. This paper addresses four dimensions that are pivotal to the successes and failures of the system: cost, efficiency, quality. The cost of the U.S. health care system is higher than any country in the world. Its efficiency is also under heavy scrutiny. If it were not an emergency most physicians would require insurance verification. Therefore, patients would be delayed of treatment. Moreover, The healthcare system in the U.S. should be redesigned in terms of prevention rather than treatment when people are already sick. Insurance should not go higher for people that have pre-existing conditions or with more health risks. Prevention and portability of coverage are the main important aspects of the new health care reform. Current health care system in the United States compared to other nations. The cost of health care in the U.S. is the highest in the world today. The United States spent $4,178 per capita on health care in 1998, more than twice the Organization for Economic...
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...Questioning Assumptions about Health Care Systems Executive Summary The United States Health care system is the subject of much debate. At one extreme are those who argue that Americans have the best healthcare system in the world, pointing to the freely available medical technology and state-of-the-art facilities that have become so symbolic of our system. At the other extreme are those who accuse our system of being fragmented and inefficient, pointing to the fact that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other country in the world, yet still suffers from a substantial rate of uninsured, uneven quality, and administrative waste (Sultz, 2013). A review of U.S. healthcare expenses by the Institute of Medicine revealed that thirty cents of every dollar spent on medical care is wasted, adding up to $750 billion annually (http://www.iom.edu, 2012). The Institute of Medicine report identifies six major areas of medical waste: unnecessary services; inefficient delivery of care; excess administrative costs; inflated prices; prevention failures; and fraud (http://www.iom.edu, 2012). Americans spend twice as much on health care per capita than any other country in the world. In fact, according to a series of studies by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, the US spends more on health care than the next ten biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia (http://www.mckinsey.com, 2008) Introduction ...
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...Single-Payer Healthcare Reform in the United States Not long ago, Tina Bachtel, a beautiful thirty-five-year-old women from Ohio walked into a local healthcare clinic seeking treatment. Tina was pregnant and having health issues. She had visited the clinic prior to that day while uninsured which resulted in her having a large unpaid balance. Bachtel was denied treatment. She was told she could only be granted service if she paid one hundred dollars per visit. Tina Bachtel did not have the money to pay upfront. Shortly after leaving the hospital, Tina Bachtel and her baby died (Krugman). Healthcare nightmares like these are not uncommon in the United States. Reform of the American healthcare system is crucial for a healthier and more financially...
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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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...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 health insurance coverage by age group: United States, 1997-2008. (2009) Table 1.1a. Number of persons without health insurance coverage, by age group: United States, 1997–2008 Year Number in millions: all ages Number in millions: under 65 years Number in millions: 18–64 years Number in millions: under 18 years 1997 41.0 40.7 30.8 9.9 1998 39.3 39.0 30.0 9.1...
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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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...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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...National Health Insurance -- Setback or Solution? Unless a person has been living under a rock the last few decades, they would be aware the U.S. healthcare system - how it is financed, how it is delivered, and who receives the benefits has been in and out of public consciousness. Why all the attention? According to a policy brief, released by the New America Foundation, “lack of health insurance negatively affects the overall productivity of society, the stability of emergency care, and the health and financial well-being of individuals” ( Carpenter & Axeen, 2008, p. 1). The brief also states that everyone’s cost of care is affected by the uninsured, so therefore to address the cost problem, the uninsured will have to be covered (Carpenter & Axeen, 2008, p. 1). H.R. 676, drafted by Rep. John Conyers, proposes national health insurance (NHI) as a solution which raises many concerns and questions ("Text of H.R. 676 | John Conyers for Congress", n.d., p. 1). Is national health insurance another way of saying ‘socialized medicine’? According to Uew Reinhardt, a respected economist,” socialized medicine refers to health system in which the government owns and operates both the financing of health care and its delivery” (Reinhardt, 2009, p. 1). In contrast, national health insurance is a system in which “…the government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector” (Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), 2012, p.1). NHI, as...
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...before. Liberals on the far left of the spectrum believe that health care should be provided to all Americans regardless of their income. They assert that a universal health care system or even single-payer system would be the best form of health care to put in place. Now that health care has become increasingly unaffordable for many families and businesses, the turn towards a universal or single-payer plan could be the right move. Conservatives on the other side of the spectrum, the far right, tend to lean towards the government having minimum involvement in providing health care for the public. They believe health care should be privatized and based on a free market. By increasing competition and trying to keep insurance companies honest, conservatives claim health care system would be fixed. This idea is clearly inconsistent because many people in the US cannot afford to pay for privatized health insurance. Many conservatives also deem the concept of universal health care as inefficient. The U.S spends the most money in the world on health care each year, a whopping 2 trillion dollars. This is more than Canada which has a universal health care system, yet Canadians live three years longer on average than Americans. As we continue to spend more money than other countries on health care, our system...
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...PubHealth129- Final Paper TA: Vinne 12/12/12 Single-Payer Systems The United States health care system and the health coverage it has for its citizens are both unmistakably flawed. While our country offers many means of achieving health insurance like private, employer, and government assisted, twenty percent of citizens still do not even have health insurance. This means that these people are not getting coverage on their medical bills, and are therefore a lot less likely to visit the doctor until there is no choice. Even people who do have health insurance in the United States still do not get the affordable, comprehensive coverage they should. Compared to similar industrialized nations, we are far behind their level of comprehensive and affordable services. These countries often have what is called a single-payer system. The single-payer system is a health care plan that funds every person’s medical expenses from the same pool of money. The challenges of implementing the single-payer system are going to be from political barriers and transitioning the United States from a mixed insurance system. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this type of insurance mechanism, but this method has proven to have worked. There is no reason not to implement this advantageous system in America. Right now the insurance industry in the United States is not only complex, but inadequate. There are tens of thousands of different health care organizations; HMOs, private billings...
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...Tutor Course Date Final Project Comparison of Healthcare in US and Canada There are various differences between the healthcare systems in Canada and US. The differences were indelibly noted in 2004 after a policy analyst compared the two countries on the healthcare systems. According to the analysis, it was noted that US has an expensive healthcare system that doubles the Canadian healthcare systems. According to the percapita income expenditure on health report, the U.S spends $6,096 while Canada spends $3,038. On the other hand, other studies that were conducted later after the study was done indicate that the Canadian healthcare systems are better than the U.S healthcare systems. The reviews illustrated that the Canadian healthcare systems give the Canadians better and superior healthcare services as compared to the U.S (Pylypchuk&Sarpong, 2013). Pylypchuk andSarpong (2013) contended that various analysts have found that U.S is one of the countries whose spending on healthcare is big, but suffers the poorest healthcare for its people. Reports show that Canada has longer life expectancy than the US. The report on infant mortality in Canada shows that Canada is better than U.S by a great margin. Although analysts say that the comparative analysis do not give consistent differences between the healthcare systems, U.S is one of the countries that has been spot-lit of the idea of expensive healthcare. The actual reasons for the differences between...
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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 Governments Fiscal Policy and Healthcare Proposals Trisha Elledge Colorado Christian University Abstract Bernie Sanders is looking to convert our country to a universal single-payer healthcare system. The following paper will break apart the article written by Avik Roy for Forbes titled Bernie Sanders’ Single-Payer Health Care Plan Would increase Federal Spending By At Least $28 Trillion. By converting to a single-payer healthcare system households would suffer more than they would thrive. Increased taxes, less government revenue and a higher unemployment rate can all come from implementing Berniecare into our country. Although Bernie Sanders is claiming to give “free” healthcare to all, I will point out why it is not free at all and why we should give the control of our healthcare back in to the hands of the people and out of the control of the government. The Governments Fiscal Policy and Healthcare Proposals According to Reem Heakal with Investopedia, “Fiscal policy is the means by which a government adjusts its spending levels and tax rates to monitor and influence a nation’s economy.” This can include the changing of tax rates nationally or adding a new local tax, adjusting where money is spent and allocated or changing where our government dollars and tax dollars will be used. Each year the government decides where our money will be divided out by agreeing on the upcoming year’s budget, however; as the year goes on money is overspent or gets cut and has...
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