...health insurance coverage among the U.S. population. Discuss the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the difficulties that might be encountered by those mandated to participate. Discuss the origin of employment-based health insurance. Explain the difference between fully insured and self-insured health plans. In the most recent survey identified, the distribution of national health spending for calendar year 2002 it was noted that the public sector accounted for 56.1 percent of health spending within the civilian noninstitutionalized population. Public spending on health care among the civilian, noninstitutionalized population averaged $2,612 per person (2002 dollars). Tax subsidies averaged $745 per person. Public spending averaged more than half of total health spending. Age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Public spending was strongly related to age. Children age eighteen or under received $1,225 of public spending apiece, on average, which was less than one-fifth of average public spending for seniors ($6,921). This is not surprising, given that total expenditures rise with age. What is more interesting is that public spending as a share of total spending was ten percentage points higher for seniors than for children, despite much-publicized expansions in children's eligibility for public coverage. Indeed, the public share for children was only 5.4 percentage points higher for children than for adults under age sixty-five. Differences by sex were less...
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...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 care as the privately insured? 3.Are pediatric specialists more wiling to accept privately insured children over the public insured? Medicaid, or...
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...Expenses, Poverty, and the Uninsured∗ Kyle J. Caswell† and Brett O’Hara SEHSD Working Paper 2010-17‡ U.S. Census Bureau Washington, D.C. December 29, 2010 Abstract The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance argued that the current official U.S. poverty measure should be updated to capture changes in the population’s healthcare costs and needs; families with sufficiently high medical out-ofpocket (MOOP) expenditures may be ‘poor’ even though they are not counted as such. This research offers three distinct advances toward achieving the NAS recommendations as they concern MOOP spending. Firstly, this paper uses the newly collected MOOP expenditure data from the CPS ASEC, and analyzes its quality vis-` -vis alternative sources. Secondly, a poverty estimates that incorporate the MOOP spending data from the CPS ASEC are produced in such a way as to be consistent with the NAS recommendations. These direct estimates are an improvement over previous estimates, conditional on obtaining high-quality data, because modeling MOOP expenditures from other surveys is not needed. Third, this paper investigates how the distribution of MOOP expenditures, and the poverty estimates, change when it is assumed that the uninsured have the spending patterns of the insured. The main results are: 1) the new MOOP expenditure data is high quality; 2) incorporating observed MOOP expenditures increases the incidence of poverty across the population by approximately two percentage...
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...a Universal Health Care System in America Health care reform has recently become top priority for policy makers, and health administrators. The current health care system faces many costly problems for the uninsured/underinsured, employment-based insurance coverage, and financially burdened health service providers. Although policy makers have made many attempts to raise the number of insured, through programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise. Currently 45 million American have no health insurance and children make up approximately 10 million of that number reported by the U.S. Census Bureau (8-10). The politicians and largely the medical societies, appear to be unable to decide what society’s responsibility in health care should be to those who are unable to purchase basic coverage. Surveys conducted by institutions like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation have noted that the proportion of people named the uninsured as the single most important domestic issue. Additionally, the Woods and Kaiser Foundation study concludes 55% of the participants expressed willingness to pay some level of taxes to cover the uninsured (1-4). The majority thought that the uninsured should be offered a federal funded health care package. Universal health can enhance health and well-being by promoting access to high-quality care that is cost effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient-centered, and...
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...people’s ability to reach their full potential in life. This issue ranges from older adults to newborn children. According to the Children’s Defense Fund (n.d.), 7.2 million children under the age of 19 remained uninsured in 2012. That is 1 out of every 11 of our children. The pediatric population does not have the ability or choice to change the circumstances that their life has handed them. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) seeks to provide health insurance to uninsured children. Working cooperatively between the federal government and individual state governments, SCHIP provides an alternative to families whose wages are too high to qualify for Medicaid yet too low to make private coverage affordable. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was created by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, enacted Title XXI of the Social Security Act. It has allocated about $20 billion over 10 years to assist states insure low-income children. Problem definition Research has found that people within the United States that are uninsured suffer significant health consequences. An American that does not covered by health insurance has been associated with poorer quality of health care, lower rates of preventive care, and greater probability of death. More than 25 percent of adults that are uninsured are more likely to die prematurely than adults that do carry health insurance. In the year 2000, the Institute...
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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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...Uninsured in the United States NURS 3005 Section 1, The Context of Healthcare Delivery June 16, 2013 Uninsured in the United States Who are the uninsured and who are the recipients of uncompensated care? If you are one of the people who lives in poverty, a single parent, or middle class parents who work minimum wage jobs, then you are the uninsured. The uninsured accounts for most of the population and many people think financing the uninsured has raised the cost of health care. How did the United States health care get in this way? How have the uninsured citizens of this country received health care and what are some solutions? The purpose of this paper is to discuss the uninsured issue, how it affects the health care system in the United States, and how can the influence of nursing help the uninsured. Uncompensated care in the United States How does a person define uncompensated care? By researching this topic, the conclusion is uncompensated care and uninsured goes hand and hand. According to the American Hospital Association (2012), uncompensated care is a bad debt that comes from an uninsured patient or insurer who is unable to pay their bill (p.1). The uncompensated care does not include underpayments from Medicare and Medicaid. This affects the millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans who seek medical attention from community clinics and hospitals. When the clinics and hospitals are unable to meet the cost to operate effectively...
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...Funding the Rising Cost of U.S. Health Care. BY Vilando. HSA500 November 15, 2015 Funding the Rising Cost of U.S. Health Care. The United States continues to spend significantly more on health care than any country in the world, however, even though with this statistics the U.S has a lot of uninsured and does not have the healthiest citizens. In this paper, opinions will be given on the rising cost of overall’s health care’s impact in the U.S economy, followed by a comparising and contrasting factors impacted by the new health care act, pros and cons of using the private insurance rather than using the new health care reforms and the cost associated with its implementation and access to different groups will also be discussed. Rising Cost of Health Care The cost of the U.S health care system is higher than any country in the world. Its efficiency is also under serious scrutiny. If it was not an emergency, most physicians would require insurance verification. Therefore patients will be delayed of treatment. Moreover, the health care system in the U.S should be redesigned in terms of prevention rather than treatment with people who are already sick. Insurance should not go higher for people that have pre-existing conditions or with more health risk. Also the emergence and new discoveries in the field of...
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...has touted new benefits without measures to cut cost.1 One should know that in America there are already federal laws and programs to cover the elderly (Medicare), the poor (Medicaid), and uninsured children (CHIPs), In addition there is basically free or low cost care to anyone who needs it and it is available if one looks for it. Examples include: Shriner’s hospitals, free clinics, and providers who do pro bono work. In case that wasn’t enough, there are also laws in place that ban practices of charging more to people with pre-existing conditions in employer-based health insurance. The 60% of Americans who get their healthcare insurance from their employer may actually be hurt by PPACA. All one needs to do is make the connection that minimum standards for health insurance and broader access to subsidized healthcare will drive taxes up.4 But for those who have a hard time making the connection, the literature supports costs 3 times higher than initially stated by President Obama, and an additional $118 billion through 2023.3 In order to drive home the point of higher costs, look at an example used by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Alito spoke on the hypothetical typical healthy 27 year old worker who on average consumes less than $900 annually on healthcare services. Under the PPACA that same healthy 27 year old worker will be required to spend more than 5 times that amount for a healthcare policy that gives a low deductable and pediatric services. Two services...
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...Universal insurance Course Project Implementation of Universal Health Health Policy and Economics June 22, 2014 Diera Kelley DvKelley30@Gmai.com Table of Contents Executive Summary Pg. 3 Define the Problem Pg. 4 Literature Review Pg. 4 Problem Analysis Pg. 9 I. The Uninsured II. The insured Possible Solutions Pg. 11 Solution and its Implementation Pg. 17 Justification Pg.19 References Pg.21 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The current health care crisis is depicted to be solved by the usage of Universal Health Coverage or UHC. This defined as the process of providing quality healthcare coverage with the aspect of financial gain or hardship. Since the assembly in 2005 of the World Health Assembly several countries have...
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...Although about half of current medical expenses in the United States are currently paid for through government programs such as Medicare (for the elderly), Medicaid (for the very poor and disabled), and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)for children, the American health care system can best be described as a patchwork of public and private programs (such as employer-based coverage). A mixture of public programs and private programs is common among nations that essentially cover all residents, but the American system is unique — and often uniquely inefficient in economic terms. Keywords Accessibility; Adverse Selection; HMO (Health Maintenance Organization); Medicaid; Medicare; Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (Part D); Managed Care; "Play or Pay" State Health Care Tax Policies; Rationing Health Care; Single-Payer Health Care System; CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program); Socialized Medicine; Two-Tiered Health Care System; VA (United States Department of Veterans Affairs) The US Health Care System Social Issues Overview Health Care Systems The medical business defies the normal laws of economics in at least three important ways: * Government-run programs are often cheaper, more administratively efficient, and even of superior quality than privately-run programs at the national level. * Medical insurance functions poorly by market principles unless potential policy holders most in need of health insurance are either denied coverage or are denied...
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...Protection Affordable Care Act, 2010). Members met for a series of meetings to discuss the development of a health care reform bill. Over the course of three months, this group, consisting of Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico), and Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), met for more than 60 hours, and the principles that they discussed became the foundation of the Senate's health care reform bill (Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, 2010). This meeting of the minds resulted in the President signing into law on March 23rd, 2010 the PPACA. The Congressional Budget Office estimates, the legislation will reduce the number of uninsured residents by 32 million, leaving 23 million uninsured residents in 2019 after the...
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...to plan for the future when it comes to being most efficient in seeing patients in a timely manner and having the more serious patients visit the emergency room and less serious patients visiting primary care physicians. The social problem that is addressed is that there are many uninsured and underinsured individuals who turn to the emergency room seeking medical attention instead of having the opportunity to see a primary care physician. That contributes to the crowdedness of emergency rooms overall. This is an exploratory study because exploratory research is based off secondary research. For example, by reviewing available literature, data, or using qualitative approaches, which is how this study is conducted. The unit of analysis in this study is the effect of changes in the Affordable Care Act on the usage of emergency rooms. A theory that guides this research is purely to improve health care quality in the United States. Having emergency room usage increase, along with the number of insured people increasing, health administrators are designing strategies that will benefit patients and improve the health care they receive. The specific population that this study will be about is the population of the United States, more...
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...Obamacare on the Economy Kimberly Carter Dr. Monjica-Howell MGT 5064: Cost and Economic Analysis 23 April 2013 Abstract In 2010, there were approximately 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...
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...Executive Summary Medicaid eligibility expansion under the implementation of PPACA is to include individuals and families with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, including adults without disabilities and without dependent children. According to the supreme-court ruling, states have an option to opt out of Medicaid expansion. Washington State is one of those states that have decided to implement Medicaid expansion. Community health centers (CHC) play a vital role in providing care to uninsured and low-income people even if the patients regardless of their ability to pay. CHC are also known as Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). One such community health center in Spokane is CHAS. The purpose of this analysis is to assist...
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