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 lives that make them most likely to be susceptible to more frequent and more serious acute and chronic illnesses. The current Medicaid and SCHIP available to the nation’s poor make it very difficult for them to have the continuous and good quality care that their lifestyles require. Many complex factors related to poverty and the bureaucratic complexity involved in the application and