Health Care Reform In America
Everyone knows that America has one of the worst health care systems in the world. But Americans are starting to feel the sentiment a lot more with the unusual swine flue epidemic scaring people into getting their flu shots. I suppose it would be worse to not have a health care system at all, or would it? Over 46 million Americans today are living without health insurance, and the majority of these people are working but can’t afford the high premiums or co-pays most insurance companies are charging hard working Americans. So people with children risk their well fare, their physical well being and pray for a healthy life instead of paying over half of their paychecks to the lofty insurance companies whose prices unprejudiced support getting higher. Those prices and those of the entire medical field are the reason why most Americans are a mere health emergency away from financial debt. That’s factual, most Americans are a surgery away from filing bankruptcy and we wonder why our economy is in the shape it is today. The rich can not support the dreadful when the number of those that are below the poverty line is growing while those above it are horrified fast. America is in a sinking ship, as more and more people sink below the water line of poverty, the worst our country becomes, both economically and as a superpower. The price of the dollar is the lowest its been in years and it keeps sinking as the solution to our economic problem has become to just print more money, not solving anything at all really.
According to Senator Max Baucus’ opinion piece published in Politico yesterday our healthcare system is the main reason why our economy is in that shape it is in today. In 2007, alone, our economy lost $200 billion dollars because of the poor health and shorter life span of the millions of uninsured Americans nationwide. Due to our economic crisis at least 14,000 people lose their health care coverage daily. If that’s not a crisis, then I don’t know what is. Even those with health insurance face extra fees due to “uncompensated care totaling up to $1,100 a year” (Baucus). Also during 2007 and 2008 premiums rose nearly 78 percent while incomes were raised a mere 15 percent. Is it any wonder how people can lost their health insurance? Also, it’s a known fact that wages have not been equal to inflation forcing families to sacrifice lavish necessities such as health care for simpler necessities such as food, clothing, and housing. If it came time to make a choice between feeding your children or providing them with health care is it a wonder which one was sacrificed?
Also, in this poor state over one and a half million families are losing their homes to foreclosure, because of their rising medical bills, and no insurance to help. A well-liked prediction of the near future of our country is that in seven years most Americans will spend nearly half of their total income on health insurance (Baucus). That’s ridiculous, and that also takes away funds from other areas of your life such as food and housing. While the latter of the two has gone down in this recession, due to the high numbers of foreclosure, the price of the former, food, has risen and will only get higher as this recession continues. At this point in our economic lives, our country would be helped by the starting of small businesses and the creation of jobs, but with the rising cost of health insurance, “an increase of 114% in 10 years”, small businesses can’t afford to give their employees insurance (Baucus). And most people will not work for a company without some form of health benefits.
This Senator of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee realizes the importance of our health care in solving our economic crisis and is working with President Obama to fix our ailing health care system. He states that never in his thirty plus years as a United States Senator has he faced such a daunting, or more important task. But he sees the blueprint to attain this goal as being compromise, something that few of the big wigs in this arena have failed to do. The way he sees things health care reform needs to lower the costs of health care in the long run while also improving the quality and ensure every American regardless of income has the kind of adorable health care they deserve as U.S. citizens. The emphasis should be on better care not more care which is what the emphasis is on today, which as he sees it is the reason why costs are through the roof (Baucas).
Howard Dean, the venerable governor of Vermont and Presidential candidate and practicing physican, believes that an “investment in health care technology and a comprehensive nationwide system of medical health records” need to be instituted for health care reform to be successful (Dean). Not only would this serve in the early detection of infectious diseases, a worry we are facing today, but also lower costs, medical errors will be prevented, less paperwork, and widespread access to affordable care will result from this belief. Dean, whose wife is a part of a small private practice, recognizes that this thought needs to include a more cost effective option for smaller practices who can not afford the advances in electronic records. He goes on to space that if the health record system proposed existed today, then the swine flu could be accurately documented as well as predicted and even the spread of the virus could be prevented.
The Obama administration is in full agreement with this thought funding health care information technology through the stimulus package. Funds in the sum of $19 billion dollars over five years to this portion of health care. But this is not enough needed to move our entire paper heath record system to an electronic platform. To put this in reference to other funds, the banking and insurance companies site aside anywhere from 6 to 8 percent of their budgets on information technology, which totals to about $50 billion a year in health care. The money isn’t enough, but what money there is, like anything else, needs to be spend wisely, if there is to be any hope for health care reform. Dean chooses to focus on the smaller, private practices who he says are not resistant to new technology. But this technology needs to have “minimal effort and won’t disrupt their practice environments” (Dean). Our focus should at first be electronic ordering in labs, medicine and radiology, which are the three things that are ordered the most habitually. He purposes incentives directed toward these smaller practices to improve the “continuity of care and clinical decision support” (Dean).
He also purposes the need to budget what money is given to this section of health care not only to go to research and development of the modern technologies but also the implementation of these technologies. It is through this that health care reform with be most successful. In order for small private practices to receive the savings possible create an entirely electronic medical record system they need to assist in designing the system. The need is for a universal program that is all ready based on existing technology to ensure that they receive the maximum benefits from the purposed system and that the system will be implemented correctly.
Works Cited
Baucus, Max. 2009. “Baucus on health care: ‘Crisis’ not too strong a word.” Politico.
Capital News Company LLC. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21939.html.
Dean, Howard. 2009. “Dean: Improvements must take small practices into account.” Politico. Capital News Company LLC. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21954.html.
Related Posts
Filed under llc bankruptcy by on Dec 28th, 2011. 
Leave a Comment