...was signed into law reform by president Barrack Obama and taken into Supreme Court on June, 28th 2012. The goal of the affordable Care Act is to provide individuals with health insurance that they can afford. Americans applied for coverage when open enrollment in the marketplace starting October 1st 2013 and started receiving coverage by January 1st 2014. Obamacare is not for those who already have health coverage through an employer, Medicare or Medicaid. If you already have insurance you do not have to worry about this. “Obamacare does not replace private insurance Medicare or Medicaid” (obamacarefacts.com). The Healthcare Law will benefit those on Medicare Medicaid and private insurance providing better options, better values and better healthcare. A topic that has been trending is whether Obamacare is “affordable” or not. The Healthcare Reform will cost families and individuals a small percentage of what they earn after cost assistance. Obamacarefacts.com state “Obamacare will cost most of us between 3% and 9% of our income after cost assistance.” Cost assistance is given to low to middle income Americans. People who do not qualify for tax credits and cost assistance can still find a good deal in the health insurance marketplace. The ACA for a lot of Americans have provided affordable health coverage, but for many who are struggling with will already have to find the extra money for coverage. Obamacare is hard on people who are underemployed or full time students...
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...Medicare program as a way to provide much needed health care insurance for the large population of elderly Americans. In “Introduction to US Health Policy”, Donald Barr highlights that when Medicare was passed in 1965, only about 56 percent of elderly citizens in the United States had any form of hospital insurance. Since aging is an inescapable fate of every person, there was an American consensus that no one should face financial ruin due to the rising costs of receiving health care during their elderly years which served as a catalyst for this program’s formation. The passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 has further...
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...bad with a centralized single-payer health care system. Health care spending is fairly low. Long waitlists for treatments are horrendous, and rationing pervades the system. Patients have the choice of providers with little access to specialists. Under Great Britain’s healthcare everyone is covered. Great Britain has a single-payer system funded by general revenues. With this centralized system, avoiding deficits is difficult. Great Britain’s deficit in 2006 was 700 million pounds despite healthcare spending increases over 43 billion pounds in 5 years. They pay through government taxation that is protected under the National Health Services (NHS). The people who are a part of the NHS bear the benefits while the people who opt out of the NHS will receive the burdens. You can’t defect from enrolling or you’re not covered. That being said, only 11.5% of the people opt out of the NHS. Private health insurance replicates the coverage provided by the NHS, but gives patients access to higher quality care and reduced waiting times. The general mission of Great Britain is to live and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Great Britain’s way of healthcare would fall under the utilitarian theory of justice. Which states, benefits and burdens should be distributed in a way that maximizes the net good (utility) of society. Great Britain’s health care in my opinion is just, yet it has to be a good policy for people to agree. Government subsidized insurance is should be for those who...
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...Health Care Service Corporation Market Department To: Denise A Bujak, Vice President From: Market Research Assistant Subject: Summary Report-Information about Health Care Date: 28 June, 2011 The purpose of this memo is to summarize three popular writer’s views regarding the U.S. health-care system. Chris Farrell, Steve Forbes, and Greg Nelson analyze the current market trends and offer us their methods to improve the economy of the health insurance industry. Summary In general, there are some flaws in the U.S. health-care. All three writers point out different ways to fix it. In their passages, the main point of distinction involves government intervention in the market. Farrell prefers the universal coverage on health-care, claiming that government intervention will promote the economy in the short-term. In contrast, Forbes hopes through macro-control to adjust the current insurance market. Nelson supports government intervention as a means to cut administration cost and help the health-care system run well. Discussion In their discussions, they hope health-care reform can speed up U.S. economic recovery and help most people are insured. For our company, I think we need to know more information about the U.S. health-care reform which is good for us to make a right direction in a long term. Now, we are starting to share their opinions. Chris Farrell adopts the health care reform, because he...
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...Assessment of the Current Health Insurance Market Health insurance, whether it is private, public or commercial, is a system that distributes the financial burden of medical care among insured members (Austin and Hungerford). To explain how health insurance works, insurance companies first collect premiums from their members and use the funds collected to pay for members’ medical expenses. On one hand, some members may be sick and incur a significant amount of medical expenses. On the other hand, most members will remain relatively healthy and have a small amount of medical expenses. Even though, insurance companies will not know which members will become sick, they are able to calculate the average cost of medical expenses among a large group of members. Insurance companies use the premiums collected from members who are healthy to pay for those who become sick. Before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, having a health insurance was optional for all Americans. It was mainly the risk-averse consumers who bought health insurance, and these individuals wanted to avoid the financial risks of unpredictable health care expenses by paying a known amount of premium. However, since 2014, people have been penalized for not having health insurance and the fee for not having insurance coverage will be higher every year. Resulting from the healthcare law change, individuals who did not have the health insurance will have more incentives to buy insurance since they will be fined...
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...Step 2: ObamaCare is also known as the Affordable Care Act or ACA for short. “The Affordable Care Act was signed into law March 23, 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court on June 28, 2012. The ACA’s main goal is to give more Americans access to affordable, quality health insurance and to reduce the growth in U.S. health care spending. The Affordable Care Act expands the affordability, quality, and availability of private and public health insurance through...
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...attempted to enforce The Health Security Act. His efforts to bring universal health care coverage to the United States is one that nearly ended his presidency. The intention of the President was to enhance the healthcare system and to provide universal health care coverage to Americans much like that of almost all other industrialized countries. The Health Security Plan, however, failed. There were both good and bad aspects of the plan but ultimately it was too flawed to even come before congress for a vote. President Clinton had the best of intentions when he attempted health care reform, he wanted to provide universal health care coverage with cost control. He felt that all Americans deserved health insurance and that inflation was skyrocketing and making health care unaffordable and unattainable for many Americans.The core element of the Health Security Plan were to enforce a mandate that requires all employers to provide health insurance coverage to all employees. Besides universal coverage and a basic benefit package, provisions included health insurance reform, regional alliances for structuring competition among health insurance plans, consumer choice of health plans, and provisions for Medicaid beneficiaries. Proposed mental health and substance abuse provisions included coverage of intensive nonresidential services, medical management, evaluation and assessment services, and case management. Initial limitations on coverage of inpatient mental health services and psychotherapy...
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...March 2010. It has been the most significant overhaul in the United States healthcare since Medicare and Medicaid. The Patient Protection and Affordable Act affirms the core principal that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care. Obamacare is aimed at helping the underinsured obtain insurance when they do not have insurance. Under Obamacare, everyone would have health insurance regardless of income or anything that would prohibit the person from attaining health insurance. Health insurance will be extended by expanding Medicaid and by providing federal subsidies to help lower and middle class citizens buy private coverage. Although health insurance will be extended, Obamacare raises issues of federalism, Obamacare has advantages and disadvantages, and Obamacare is not consistent with federal policy. Federalism facilitates the problem solving synergies that arise between the separate strengths of local and national governance for dealing with different parts of inter-jurisdictional problems. Obamacare raises issues of federalism because some say that mandated healthcare can be considered unconstitutional. Some view the fact that the government telling the citizens they have to have insurance goes against the Constitution. Under Obamacare, the government requires citizens to buy healthcare from private companies in order from having to pay annual penalties. According to Roger Vinson, congress must operate within the bounds established by the...
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...SOCIAL POLICY OBAMA CARE Obama care is the unofficial name for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which was signed into law on MARCH 23, 2010. Effective January 1, 2014, Obamacare requires all eligible individuals, including children, to have health insurance. Failure to be insured can trigger a penalty fee of $ 95 per adult and $47.50 per child in 2014. If you have individual coverage but your dependent children aren’t insured, you can still face penalties on them. No one knows how many Americans will be without health insurance in 2014. A 2012 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 30 million Americans will not have insurance in 2016, and roughly 6 million of them will face penalties. The penalties for individuals are expected to increase each year, and the uninsured will have to pay either a fee or percent of household income (whichever is greater). In 2014, the fee is $95 per adult or 1 percent of household income. In 2015, the fee is $ 325 per adult of 2 percent of household income. In 2016, the fee is $ 695 per adult or 2.5 percent of household income. The penalties for children are half that for adults. To avoid a penalty fee you must have health insurance that meets the law’s minimum standard for coverage. This advertisement does not accurately portrays the social policy. It outlines in details what the penalties would be if individuals are not covered by the deadline. The advertisement also defines what...
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...Ryan Johnson Soci 371 11/6/2013 Necessary health care in America Finding issues with in the American healthcare system is not a very difficult task. But figuring out how these problems came about takes us on another road through the history of the American healthcare system, and allows us to see how we got to our current system. A few things we will be looking at what are some of the most disruptive problems in Americas system, hat other countries do that make their health care system work well, and what are some of the things that we can do to help make out health care system more available, and affordable to everyone. To start out our discussion on health care in America I think that we should start by looking where we stand in the world rankings of the most successful health care systems in terms of affordability, quality, and availability. We rank last out of the most developed countries in spending for insurance, yet we managed to visit our doctors less than any of the other highly developed countries. Over the past thirty years the medical industry has been leaning more towards the growth of administers instead of physicians. This means that the health care business is becoming more and more profit based. What this is saying to me is that even though we’re paying the most, we are not going to visit our physicians as much as other countries. Another factor that plays into where we fall behind to other countries is, how long we’re in a hospital for. On average...
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...For US citizens covered by private health insurance, receiving treatment is not necessarily easy with many insurance contracts containing terms and conditions excluding treatments which would be covered under the NHS. This has led to scandals where individuals have died as a result of not reading the fine print on their insurance contracts a massive 21% of claims in California are rejected by private insurers. (Reuters 2011) The profit-driven running of companies that are essentially meant to provide coverage guaranteeing the maintenance of health has seen managers receiving salaries exceeding 13 million dollars compared with the NHS’s top salary of less than half a million US. Not covering an individual for expensive treatment thus saves the company money and provides stockholders with dividends or capital gain a very dangerous approach to the provision of healthcare coverage. An estimated 62% of individuals’ bankruptcies are related to healthcare bills, and of these,80% had health insurance numbers which would cause widespread revolt among Europeans. The private nature of US healthcare has resulted in pharmaceutical companies directly advertising to consumers the infamously endemic “ask your doctor if MagicMarioMix is suitable for you” tagline. Consumers thus ask their doctors about the advertised drug, and every 1 US dollar spent on advertising by pharmaceutical companies’ results in $4.20 of sales. The quick-fix or one-pill solution approach, rife among Americans, is reflected...
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...Liberals and Conservatives When I think of the conservative view, the first thing that comes to mind is Adam Smith. Smith believed that individuals should have a natural right to obtain and protect proper nature materialistic, and the right to maximize their material well-being. Capitalism believes in competition within in the markets to endorse the public interest. In a capitalist system it encourages three major factors that effect the market and people. First, that it would lead to satisfaction of nations and individuals. Second, being in a competitive state it would force others to compete by drawing down prices and output would be at the highest due to the continuous competition. The most important factor in capitalism is that it creates innovations that are useful to society. Conservatives believe that buyers and sellers will react positive to innovations that benefit the society, while those that fall behind will be knocked out of competition. In order for this to work conservatives believe there has to be minimum interference with the market, also know as laissez-faire. No interference means no big government, no powerful unions, and no conspiring in trade. Conservative model isn’t a society without government, but a model that protects unnatural interference in the marketplace. To protect unnatural intrusion within business, the state should take such actions as deregulating industries, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and lower tax burdens. There...
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...Everything we do in life is either a debit or credit which leaves you with either a loss or a gain. Health care has become so much of a debt on people’s lives when it should be a credit. We as people should be able to have access to healthcare at an affordable price with quality service which are three aspects that are the most important in healthcare access, quality, and cost. Healthcare access is simply being able to have it when you need it although many don’t have it due to cost or because they don’t have the knowledge to access it. Access to healthcare effects the consumer’s quality of life which can lead to fatally. Cost which is being able to afford the healthcare is one of the biggest issues according to www.cdc.gov.com the percent...
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...The existing arrangement of the U.S. health care system leaves large numbers of the American population without access to adequate health care. Currently, about 45 million Americans do not have any health insurance, resulting in inability to receive the necessary care required for a healthy and productive life (NCHC). Further, government run programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, are not sufficient and effective means of providing care for those eligible for them. Poor Families in America’s Health Care Crisis by Ronald J. Angel, Laura Lein, and Jane Henrici illustrates how the safety net for health care through current government programs does not work and how access to health care cannot be considered universal. The Three City Study, a large, multidisciplinary examination of the consequences of welfare reform for children and families in poor neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, gives a personalized look into the flaws of the United States’ welfare and health care systems (Angel 7). Through these ethnographic studies, it can be determined that the current safety net for poor Americans is made ineffective because of discontinuity of care and the employer-based nature of health care. Poverty can be defined as the “lack of social capital or power to control one’s life or that of one’s children in important ways” (Angel 30). With this being said, it can easily be seen why poor Americans live very chaotic and unstable...
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...Economics of Healthcare Faculty Sever South University 10 December 2013 Abstract Managed care, a deliver system for health care intended to reduce the cost of that care. Examples of managed care organizations are HMO, IPA, PPO, POS and PFFS. MCO’s operate through contractual agreements that are set to meet certain standards due to the fact that they don’t have direct control. Managed care provider and hospital reimbursement ranges from fee for service and capitation. Episode-of-care is where providers receive one lump sum for all the services they provide related to a condition or disease, and capitation is where the third party payer reimburses providers a fixed amount for a period. There are many other forms of reimbursement between these two methods and vary depending on service. Risk – based payment applies to both hospitals and providers. With so many choices in health care coverage and means of payments, it becomes necessary to be sure you have a complete understanding of what is expected from you, what is covered and not covered and to be sure any treatment is necessary. Along with managed care, we have to consider how this affects Medicare and Medicaid. These have changed the healthcare system and joined together to better serve the public. Managed care; advantages and disadvantages as well as how it came to be are to follow. Managed Health Care dates as far back as 1910; one example is when the Western Clinic in Tacoma, Washington provided a wide range of medical...
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