... When you think of working people being uninsured, most will think that it must be a stressful and unfortunate situation for that person. However, it has an effect on everyone across the board, not just the uninsured. Employers, hospitals, and physicians are also affected by the uninsured working class. There is an impact, on some level, to cost, quality, and access for all involved. This case study’s issue based on the topic/content area/change, working people being uninsured not only has an impact on their personal lives but also on businesses and the health care industry. Financials issues begin to arise for the uninsured person and their family, as well as, productivity decreases for businesses when their employees are out sick or working while ill. If employers offered even a small amount of health coverage, or perhaps informed staff of outside options for health coverage, they have a greater chance of ensuring the productivity of their employees, avoiding lost work days and decreasing employees’ financial issues. Stakeholder groups in this case study are Hospitals, Physicians, Employers, Patient, Third-Party Payers (Insurers) and the Government. Impact on Cost, Impact on Quality, and Impact on Access affects each of these stakeholders. The uninsured patients have increased costs; they are expected to pay out-of-pocket for healthcare. Costs for Hospitals will rise due to the uninsured increasing visits to the Emergency Room, where they cannot...
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...Barriers to Healthcare Stephen Saputra HCM735 – Healthcare Delivery Systems Jean Gordon May 22, 2014 Barriers to Healthcare Healthcare is an important aspect to every country and its population. People need good access to healthcare so that they can stay in good health as well as treat any illness or sickness so they can return to being healthy. Unfortunately in the United States, there is still a percentage of the population without access to health insurance – public or privates. There are many barriers to healthcare that prevents access to healthcare services such as geographic, physical, temporal, socio-cultural, or financial barriers. It may not be hard to believe that the United States spends the largest amount of money par capita for its health services compared to any other countries. The majority of U.S. population is covered with health insurance in some form, and they have easy access to various healthcare providers. The number of hospitals, emergency rooms, outpatient facilities has been continuously increasing in the last decade and many people are utilizing their service to maintain their health or improve it when they have an illness. We are seeing a shift in the trend lately of patients utilizing more outpatient facilities compared to the traditional hospital-centric care model. However it may come as a surprise to some that the high expenditure does not directly correlates to the U.S having the best healthcare system in the world. The health status...
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...Policy Analysis Paper The fate of uninsured Veterans: A policy Analysis University of 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...
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...50 million uninsured Americans. In March 2010, President Obama signed into law a piece of legislation that reformed American’s healthcare industry. The legislation is coined as “Obamacare.” Supporters argue Obamacare provides coverage for our nation’s uninsured while boosting economy. Opponents argue Obamacare will increase healthcare costs and in turn, add to the deficit. The research supports the belief that improving the health status of the American citizens does result in economic expenditures for the United States. There is a relationship between affordable healthcare and the economy. The impact Obamacare has on the economy can be viewed through a simple math equation, a return on investment analysis. The return on investment analysis revealed a positive return on investment. The results suggest American has invested wisely. Investing in the healthcare of the American citizens will improve productivity, is cost effective, and reduces healthcare care costs. The Impact of Obamacare on the Economy In 2010, there were approximately 50 million uninsured Americans. This means that 16.9% of American’s population is uninsured. The numbers are overwhelming and reveal healthcare in American is not affordable. Many argue that the cost of healthcare has doubled in recent years (Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). Most Americans receive healthcare insurance through their employers. However, being employed does not guarantee affordable healthcare. The numbers...
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...purpose of this essay is to discuss, how does access to insurance differ from access to care? How does the federal health care reform legislation of 2010 address access to insurance? What do you see as the ultimate goal of expanding insurance coverage? How well do you think federal reform is designed to address some of the obstacles this country has faced in achieving universal coverage? And if access to medical care is increased through health care reform, what unanticipated consequences might arise. According to U.S. healthcare policy, access to healthcare applies to measures accessibility to needed primary care, health care specialists, and emergency treatment. Healthcare insurance is an important step toward accessing the different aspects of the health care system, health insurance by itself does not ensure access. “There is a need for comprehensive coverage, providers that accept the individual’s health insurance, relatively close proximity of providers to patients, and primary care providers in the community. There are many barriers to access in some populations due to lack of transportation to providers’ offices, lack of understanding about preventive care, long waits to get an appointment, low health information, and limited finances to pay the high-deductible of many insurance plans and/or co-pays for receiving treatment” (Andersen, Rice, & Kominski,2007). Healthcare insurance was established to secure access to healthcare services, protects families, and individuals...
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...Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3 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...
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...Analysis: The Affordable Care Act and Nursing Problem Identification Healthcare costs are soaring in the United States today. More people than ever before are uninsured or underinsured. In 2006-07, there were 46 million people uninsured (Gulley, Rasch, & Chan, 2011), and 9 million children also did not have health insurance (Coddington & Sands, 2008). A change in how healthcare is managed and financed is greatly needed to avoid worsening of this situation. Background The cost of healthcare and the number of uninsured individuals has become a critical issue today. Healthcare spending in the U. S. has grown faster than the economy, by about two to three percent per year since the end of World War II (Brown, 2009, p. 1). If nothing changes, Medicare will cost as much as the sum of all federal income taxes in about 75 years (Brown, 2009, p. 2). Healthcare premiums have become so unaffordable, that many families do without. The lack of insurance has a direct effect on poor health outcomes, increasing morbidity and mortality, which also contributes to increased healthcare costs (Coddington & Sands, 2008, p. 1). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as Obamacare, was signed into law on March 23, 2010, and the Supreme Court made a final decision to uphold the law on June 28, 2012 (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services). The PPACA is an attempt at healthcare reform by expanding public coverage programs and strengthening protection...
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...HC1: The rising cost of healthcare is one of the greatest challenges facing the United States that will continue in the coming generations. Reducing the cost and improving the quality should be a top national priority, but despite the many attempts to reshape healthcare market place and improve delivery in the past years, current trends have proved otherwise. There is no doubt that America has benefited from the Affordable Care Act, which reduced health care spending and insured more than 90 percent of the population, but unfortunately, this slowdown has ended and healthcare spending has recently risen above inflation and wage growth (Rother, 2016). Recent statistics has shown that the U.S spent $1.3 million to 2.5 million between 1999 and 2009 o healthcare (Auerbach, 2011). HC2: The continuous increase in healthcare cost affects the...
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...Healthcare Utilization Access to health care refers to the ease with which an individual can obtain needed medical services. Access to comprehensive, quality health care services is important for the achievement of health equity and for increasing the quality of a healthy life for everyone. Individuals who have difficulty gaining access to health care may delay seeking and obtaining treatment, underutilize preventive health care services, and may have a high prevalence of chronic disease risks. Access and Usage of Healthcare Services Disparities in access to health services affect individuals and society. Limited access to health care impacts people's ability to reach their full potential, negatively affecting their quality of life. Barriers to services include lack of availability, high cost and lack of insurance coverage. Health insurance coverage helps patients get into the health care system. Uninsured people are less likely to receive medical care, more likely to die early and to have poor health status. According to Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of the 2000-2012 National Health Interview Surveys, in 2014, 48% of uninsured adults said the main reason they were uninsured was because the cost was too high. Many people do not have access to coverage through a job, and some people, particularly poor adults in states that did not expand Medicaid, remain ineligible for public coverage. In addition, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid or...
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...Introduction A. More than 50 million uninsured in the United States (Young, 2012) B. Uninsured population is considered vulnerable population C. Uninsured use emergency department to meet their primary health care needs D. Overcrowded emergency departments require reallocation of resources * II. Effectiveness of the Current Procedures in Place * A. Federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals * to treat every patient irrespective of the payer source B. Limited community resources forces uninsured population returning to emergency department for minor ailments C. Shrinking federal and state funding for medical assistance programs D. Current procedures do not address medical needs of the undocumented populations * E. Treating uninsured costs taxpayers more than $175 billion per year (KFF, 2008) F. Hospitals absorb more than $65 billion dollars per year in uncompensated care III. Affects of financial decision-making process A. Express/Urgent Care areas added to emergency B. PA added to Triage to treat minor health issues C. Sponsor Care Funds Created 1. Hospitals have created sponsor care programs designed to help alleviate the amount of debt created by an insured patient. The funding for sponsor care programs comes from direct donations from the community and are meant specifically for patients that are receiving services for uninsured. These programs are provided...
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...gain access to healthcare, U.S. citizens are unable to cover for their medical needs, resulting in less frequent doctor visits regarding their health. Medical bills become too expensive for the individual as they are unable to pay for it alone. While insurance companies turn away from U.S. citizens, they create a domino effect as “emergency department visits nationwide [increase] sharply as a result of the uninsured and underinsured seeking relief from potentially preventable complications” (Ballaro and Sprague). With the 45 million uninsured in the United States, the country’s health suffers from an increase in emergency visits. These emergency visits are the effect of private insurance companies denying the minority access to health insurance, and as a result cause the nation’s overall health to deteriorate. Without access to funds that are able to aid in the difficulty of paying for medical attention, the population of the uninsured are reduced to small yet limited health supplies. Instead of getting the prescription medication, many will have to turn to over-the-counter medication which may not help with their specific pains. Consequently, specific medical needs cannot be targeted unless the condition becomes serious to the point where an ambulance is involved. In order to prevent the increase of further emergency visits, providing healthcare to the uninsured can allow treatment of conditions and illnesses. Under the ACA, the population is able to gain better access to healthcare...
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...Immigration and Healthcare Cost Angela Mporampora Metropolitan State College of Denver Healthcare Finance HCM 4030 Professor kelvin D. Zeller March 25, 2012 Immigration and healthcare cost Abstract. The rise in healthcare cost has been one of the most troubling economic events in recent years. Healthcare cost rises about 7.5 percent every year. The United States is known to be the nation with the highest amount spent on healthcare. Some research links immigrants to the fast paste in healthcare cost increase. Immigration became a top issue after the event of September 11th. Many believes immigration is the root cause of most of the economic problems taking place in the country today, they linked immigration to increase in healthcare cost, increase in crime rate, reason for low productivity, reason for loss of job opportunity for native- born and many more. But on the other hand, are these groups of individuals who believe immigrants are being used as “scapegoats” just because they don’t have a voice or stand in the society. They stressed the believe that even before immigration became a hot topic, the economy already had this problem in place, they denoted most research findings stating data were manipulated to support their mission; for immigrant do not visit medical establishment as often as indigenes and wonder how researchers came to the conclusion that immigrants spiked up healthcare cost. This subject is distinctly two sides and it’s difficult to find...
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...#1 Access to Health Care: Improving overall health status Equality in Access to health services is one of the forty two topic areas in Healthy People 2020 that caught my view as one of the objectives to have the highest importance in achieving a national goal of healthy Americans in the future. But what does access to health care actually means? According Gulliford et al (2002), facilitating access to health is concerned with helping people to command appropriate health care resources in order to preserve or improve their health status but unfortunately gaining access to healthcare depends on some factors such as financial, organizational and social or cultural barriers that permits or limit the said utilization of services. Therefore having much available health services is not a factor in itself to improve the quality of healthcare but the utilization of such services by all of the people which will depend on affordability and general accessibility of the service. According to Healthy People 2020 (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2012), it is important to have access to quality health care service in order to achieve equity in health and eventually improve the general health status of all Americans. This I think is one of the most important move that the state should make in order to make the vision of having healthy Americans, including all migrants, ethnic and minority groups, by the year 2020. Though free service is not always the key to have access to...
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...and families who lack access to private health insurance because of their limited finances, health status, or severe physical, mental health, intellectual, or developmental disabilities1. Currently, 1 in every 5 Americans uses Medicaid as their primary form of insurance. This means that as of 2015 over 65 million Americans, by guidelines of the department of health and human service, live on or below the federal poverty line 2. Although those numbers may seem large, former guidelines for Medicaid have left a large portion of the low-income population excluded from coverage and uninsured. Currently, adults under age 65, in nearly 25 states, no matter how low their income, are ineligible for Medicaid unless they are disabled or pregnant. As a solution to this problem the Supreme Court passed The Affordable Care Act (ACA), which would provide an expansion of Medicaid to millions of low-income, uninsured adults who were previously excluded. However the choice to expand remains a state option. While many states have chosen to move forward with the expansion, many have either opted out or lie in debate. One of the major arguments against the expansion of Medicaid lies in the debate of whether “Medicaid is worse than no coverage at all 3.” My paper will examine the affects of public healthcare on low-income individuals by answering the following questions: 1. Is Medicaid better than being uninsured? 2. Do children with public health insurance have the same access to preventative and primary...
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...the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010 some of the issues have been alleviated. For example, a decrease in the amount of uninsured Americans. The percentage of uninsured Americans has fallen from 16% to 11%, concluding that the 10 million Americans who had no insurance prior to 2013 are now insured. A primary goal of the ACA was to reduce drastically the number of uninsured. To achieve this goal the act allows children to stay under their parents’ insurance plan until age 26, requires employers of 50 or more employees, as well as uninsured Americans to receive coverage or risk paying a penalty, and most importantly make health insurance more affordable for Americans. Having active roles as the payer, regulator, and healthcare provider I believe that government has always played a significant role in the funding of the uninsured, but with no control of prices and quality of goods, market forces should continue to steer this dimension of healthcare. Each of the three levels of government owns and operates large numbers of healthcare institutions. (Jonas & Kovners, 2011). Providing funds for the uninsured falls under the job responsibility of the local government which they own and operate acute care hospitals and public health clinics. Medical treatment for the uninsured is often more expensive than for the insured, because the uninsured are more likely to delay or postpone treatment, or simply go to an emergency room. The uncompensated costs from the delayed treatments...
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