...Health Care Reform in the US Introduction Health care reform is a general term that is used for analyzing and discussing major health care changes and provisions. Most health care reforms are typically served with the responsibility of broadening the population so that they can receive adequate health care coverage through private or public insurance companies. Also they improve quality of existing health care system and decrease the cost (Weiner & Robert, 2009). The health care reform legislation act of 2009 is a bill that was enacted in USA to direct the health care insurance providers to draft and develop regulations in implementing a comprehensive policy aimed at providing effective and cheap insurance cover to all American citizens. Though beneficial to the public, since the bill was signed into law the implementation of the act has faced numerous economic, social and political challenges. In addition, the political climate is such that real challenges appear to be emerging, including legal challenges at the state level (Farber & Blustein, 2007). Finally, polls are showing that voters are not yet on board. In fact, some voters are unaware that a health care reform bill had been passed. Therefore this paper Identifies and describes the major challenges to health care reform implementation and gives an analysis of how these challenges can be resolved. Reasons and Recommendations for Health Care Reforms There is minimal question regarding the need to restructure the America's...
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...Health Care Reform For The United States COM 220 4/18/2010 Natasha Brown Health care reform for the United States Even though it will cost taxpayers a small amount more, Americans have the right to free health care. There are forty seven million Americans are without health insurance and the bill will stop insurance companies from denying Americans from coverage. What the government is trying to pass is a new health insurance reform legislation that will give coverage to many Americans who desperately need it. The benefits for the people would be that everyone would have coverage. This legislation would also hold insurance companies accountable and keep soaring insurance premiums down. This would also reduce the deficit and better the economy over time as well as reducing the cost that businesses have. What is Health care reform? Health care reform is a legislation that President Obama has signed into law to improve the United States by offering basic health care to every American. “The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a piece of legislation that will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality affordable options for those who don’t; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and the government while strengthening the financial health of Medicare. And it is legislation that is fully paid for and will reduce our long-term federal deficit ” (Obama, 2009, Statement of President Barack Obama on House Passage of...
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...Timeline: History of Health Reform in the U.S. VIEW: Early 1900's 1930 – 1934 1935 – 1939 1940 - 1945 1945 - 1949 1950 - 1954 1955 - 1959 1960 – 1964 1965 – 1969 1970 - 1974 1975 – 1979 1980 - 1984 1985 - 1989 1990 – 1994 1995 - 1999 2000 – 2004 2005 – 2009 2010 1912 Teddy Roosevelt and his Progressive party endorse social insurance as part of their platform, including health insurance. 1912 National Convention of Insurance Commissioners develops first model of state law for regulating health insurance. 1915 The American Association for Labor Legislation 1912 Teddy Roosevelt and his Progressive party endorse social insurance as part of their platform, including health insurance. 1912 National Convention of Insurance Commissioners develops first model of state law for regulating health insurance. 1915 The American Association for Labor Legislation Early 1900's 1921 Women reformers persuade Congress to pass the Sheppard-Towner Act, which provided matching funds to states for prenatal and child health centers. Act expires in 1929 and is not reauthorized. (AALL) publishes a draft bill for compulsory health insurance and promotes campaigns in several states. A few states show interest, but fail to enact as U.S. enters into World War I. The idea draws initial support from the AMA, but by 1920 AMA reverses their position. 1927 Committee on the Costs of Medical Care forms to study the economic organization of medical care. Group is comprised of economists...
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...Health Care Re Health Care Reform There has been a lot of talk and debate lately over Health Care Reform, as people are trying to answer the question – Should a universally accessible health care system be implemented in the United States (US)? This ongoing highly debatable issue remains a hot topic among US citizens from all walks of life, from the very poor to the very wealthy. Health Care Reform affects everyone. The vast majority of the US population is very dissatisfied with the current state of health care. According to the ABC News and Washington Post cooperative poll, 57 percent of Americans aren’t satisfied with the overall system of health care (Langer, 2009). Consequently, the issue of the Health Care Reform was born, but before analyzing the actual aspects of this reform it will be wise to brush up on those major attitudes and concerns which occupy ordinary people and how they respond to the unfolding changes in the area of health care and social security. More than half of the American population is convinced that the Health Care Reform is necessary and it must be carried out by the government. Hence, the government plays a huge role in the health care transformation as it provides the nation with the health care plans and outlines other possibilities for medical coverage like the health insurance exchange. President Obama suggests his own plan of stability and security for all Americans. This plan is to provide more security and stability for those...
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...Health Care Reform from an Economist Perspective Introduction Today there are many Americans without health insurance. This is due to the lack of financial resources they have to pay for the insurance , perhaps due to the unemployment rate and also due to those (younger generation) who choose to opt out of paying for health insurance. Many Americans live day to day hoping they will not get sick. From the results of these rates, President Obama signed the US Health Care Reform into law. The health care reform law encases benefits such as affordability, accessibility, comfort and ease for low income families worrying about going broke if they get sick, health care cost will be capped, and insurance companies will not be able to deny applicants due to pre-existing conditions. Accessibility simply means that insurers would have to expand insurance coverage to all Americans. This means eliminating pre-existing conditions that prevented people from gaining insurance coverage, insuring portability across states, mandating the purchase of insurance coverage, standardizing claims to reduce paperwork and providing benefits and cost information to American people allowing them an opportunity to choose a plan that best fit their needs (Shortell, 2009) Affordability has left uninsured and low income families helpless due to high premiums. The public option is an idea that hopes to establish competition that will drive down insurance premium costs between private insurers (Shortell...
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...The Need for Health Care Reform HCA 410 Professor Henry O’Lawrence December 8, 2011 The Need For Health Care Reform Health care system is now faced with many problems such as high cost of insurance, high cost of medical services, significant numbers of people lack any form of healthcare insurance, and many more people are underinsured. Heath care is not affordable and easy to obtain anymore. With the rising of health care cost, reforms are needed to be more affordable with high quality and efficiency. There are over “46 million people lacking health insurance, but also for those who have insurance the economic downturn is a chilling reminder that under current system, virtually anyone facing a run of bad luck could be quickly wiped out by medical bill collectors”. State Healy, Bernadine M.D. (2009). Providing health insurance for people uninsured and low-cost insurance are major problems need to consider and take it seriously. The number of people uninsured is too high. There are many factors leading to be uninsured including poverty, the economic downturn leading to high rated of unemployment and some working families who cannot afford coverage because too expensive, besides, earn too much to be eligible for many programs which the state's healthcare provider. Offering the healthcare options with advantages for the uninsured with affordable price is needed to take to consideration. Many low income people cannot afford health insurance usually don’t go seek for medical...
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...Health Care Reform from an Economist Perspective Managerial Economics 2/28/2013 Introduction Today there are many Americans without health insurance. This is due to the lack of financial resources they have to pay for the insurance , perhaps due to the unemployment rate and also due to those (younger generation) who choose to opt out of paying for health insurance. Many Americans live day to day hoping they will not get sick. From the results of these rates, President Obama signed the US Health Care Reform into law. The health care reform law encases benefits such as affordability, accessibility, comfort and ease for low income families worrying about going broke if they get sick, health care cost will be capped, and insurance companies will not be able to deny applicants due to pre-existing conditions. Accessibility simply means that insurers would have to expand insurance coverage to all Americans. This means eliminating pre-existing conditions that prevented people from gaining insurance coverage, insuring portability across states, mandating the purchase of insurance coverage, standardizing claims to reduce paperwork and providing benefits and cost information to American people allowing them an opportunity to choose a plan that best fit their needs (Shortell, 2009) Affordability has left uninsured and low income families helpless due to high premiums. The public option is an idea that hopes to establish competition that will drive down insurance premium...
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...The insurance companies hold a two sided, and very particular position when it comes to the health care reform. When the health care reform was in its infant stage, and just newly announced the insurers opposed the health care reform, mostly because when the health care reform is fully place the insurers would no longer be able to deny coverage for preexisting conditions. Another down side for insurance companies was the, minimum level of benefits that each insurer needed to provide in their plans, but a positive aspect to this, they could charge more for these plans. This was to be put into place with the start of the exchange. “The bill requires that insurers provide a certain minimum level of benefits in the health insurance exchanges that individuals and small firms must use to buy coverage, beginning in 2014. That should help carriers because they can charge more for mandatory benefit packages than for the catastrophic plans that they often sell in the individual and small-group markets.” CBSNEW.com Insurers has been providing coverage for many, many years. The health care reform does have some new changes to put into place, and this can be an issue for companies who have been doing the same thing since they began hundreds of years ago. Insurers have relied heavily on government funding for products like, Medicare. It is said that there will be a large cut in government payments and many insurers, who have their foot in in that door, will feel this hit more than others...
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...United States Main article: Health care reform in the United States Health care reform in the United States Healthcare reform in the US Debate over reform History Latest enacted legislation Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Senate bill - H.R. 3590) Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872) preceding legislation Social Security Amendments of 1965 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (1986) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (1996) Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (2003) Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (2005) [show] More information -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This box: view· talk· edit See also: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Maximum Out-of-Pocket Premium as Percentage of Family Income (Source: CRS) In the United States, the debate regarding healthcare reform includes questions of a right to health care, access, fairness, sustainability, quality and amounts spent by government. The mixed public-private health care system in the United States is the most expensive in the world, with health care costing more per person than in any other nation, and a greater portion of gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on it than in any other United Nations member state except...
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...Health Care Utilization Kelly A Faust HCS/235 July 21, 2015 Dr Lisa Church Health care in the United States is teetering on the edge; it will either turn into universal health care or become too expensive for the majority of Americans. Recent health care reform has been developed to lower the cost of health care and make it more widely available. However, health care in the United State may start trending towards becoming a universal system. There are many arguments to both sides of health care reform and universal health care. The Affordable Care Act is one of the most recent and controversial of the health care reform acts. The Affordable Care Act was created to lower the costs of health care for patients, providers, and the United States government. The Affordable Care Act is estimated to “reduce the federal budget deficit by more than $100 billion over the first decade and by more than $1 trillion between 2020 and 2030” (Orszag & Emanuel, 2010, para. 3). On top of saving the government money the Affordable Care Act also expands the access to health care. Starting in 2014 patients cannot be decline health insurance coverage due to a pre-existing condition. This will allow patients who have been without health insurance for at least six months to get insurance no matter their income (The United States Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.). Allow all patients to get health insurance will help lower the cost of premiums for those who already have insurance...
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...Date: | April 25th, 2012 | Subject: | Health Care Spending Growth and Reform | SUMMARY The following memo seeks to highlight the past and current problems facing federal health care expenditures within the U.S. It tries to answer the question if health care spending is now on more sustainable path along with giving projections for its current outlook. More specifically it addresses “supply-side” reforms, “demand-side” reforms and “voucher” reforms within the Medicare program, analyzing the benefits and downsides of each and what underlying problems these approaches contain. The memo summarises with recommendations as to which reform should be put in practice to achieve the desired results within the health care market. PROBLEM ANALYSIS 1. Health care expenditures are on an unsustainable path Reasons: * Aging of the population * Increase in health care costs due to excessive coverage * New medical technologies Under current law, spending for mandatory health care programs would increase from 5.6% of GDP today to about 9% of GDP in 2035. Total health care spending grew by 3.9% in 2010 and reached $2.6 trillion, or $8,402 per person. This is mainly caused by an aging of the population, an increase in retirement of the “baby boomer” generation, a rise in health care costs and a rapid innovation of medical technologies. All these factors lead to an increase in the federal budget deficit. Although recently health expenditure growth has slowed, the decline...
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...Rural Health Care By: Lurhonda Maxwell, Amanda Hacko, Laura Bottom, Patricia Delaughter, Tamara Boyd and Ta Rhonda Thomas HCS/440 Professor: Chuck Sigmund Due: September 12, 2011 Individuals and families of rural populations are confronted and struggling with the same challenges and care issues as everyone else in the nation-such as large numbers of uninsured and underinsured, high rising health care costs, and overextended health care infrastructure. Jon Bailey states that, “there are numerous unique health care issues facing rural people and rural places. Despite an array of health care differentials between urban and rural people, there is evidence that the ultimate health status of rural people has much to do with health insurance coverage and the type of health insurance coverage”. Evidence show people in rural areas with health insurance provided by there employers get more or less costly health care provided services then those who have purchased health insurance privately. Insurance that was purchased at lower cost resulted in health care services that were presumably regular and better. As discussed, people in rural areas lack coverage. People in rural areas are being denied coverage and have higher premiums because of their existing...
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...The History of Healthcare Reform……………………………………………………………………………..…4 The Problem with the ACA……………………………………………………………………………………………6 The Current Policy………………………………………………………………………………………………………..8 Policy Alternatives………………………………………………………………………………………………………10 Evaluation Criteria………………………………………………………………………………………………………10 Policy Recommendation……………………………………………………………………………………………..12 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..13 References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14 Introduction Recent health care reform legislation, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Education Reconciliation Act, which is now being referred to simply as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. Since 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...
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...Health Care Reform A newest way to finance health care now days is the health care reform which it is also called Obama Care. The Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010. The main objective behind the Affordable Care Act was to ensure that affordable health care insurance was available to every U.S citizen. This law is an extensive document that contains many regulations and laws that relate not only to health care but also to the regulation of insurance companies. One of the best known regulations is that group health plans can no longer put limitations or deny benefits to individuals under the age of 19 due to pre-existing conditions and individuals under the age of 26, are now eligible to be covered under their parents’ health care plans. Harrington (2010) states that under the health care reform individuals have now the right to appeal to their health care insurances if they deny payments for a specific reason and there are no lifetime limits on benefits. Insurance companies are now a little bit more regulated and they will have to give a good reason if they raise rates for patients. The premium paid by patients must be spent primarily in health care and not in administrative costs. Preventive health services are provided now with no cost for the patient and it may include no copays for most insured individuals. The health care reform also gives individuals the right to choose their own doctors from their plan networks, and allows individuals to access...
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...affordable health care under the updated health insurance reform legislation passed by the House. "The Affordable Health Care for America Act or H.R. 3962, blends and updates the three versions of previous bills passed by the House committees. "(Kruger, M. 2010) This bill is expected to ease the out-of-control costs of health insurance, introduce competition into the health care marketplace that will help maintain coverage affordability, protect people’s choices of doctors and health plans, and guarantee all Americans access to quality, consistent , affordable health care. The Association of American Medical Colleges stated in a Mar. 21, 2010 article; "we have taken the first step towards truly transforming health care in this country. This historic vote by the House of Representatives sets into motion long-overdue efforts to cover 32 million uninsured Americans and to assure their access to high-quality care. The nation's medical schools and teaching hospitals have expressed their full support for this bill to President Obama, and now stand ready to work with the administration and Congress to carry out these significant changes to our health care delivery system." (AAMC, 2010) The health care reform bill creates a shared responsibility for health care among individuals, employers and the government to ensure that all Americans have affordable essential health benefits. Two of the key components, and possibly the most debated or criticized of the Affordable Health Care for America...
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