Health Care and Health Care Reforms

Health Care and Health Care Reforms

Introduction

United States is the largest and most diverse society on the globe. It spends almost 2 trillion dollars every year on health care, which is one in every seven dollars in the economy. U.S is one of the very few nations where all its citizens do not have medical coverage. Although it spends heavily on per capita on health care, and it has the most advanced medical technology system in the world, still it is not the healthiest nation on earth. The system performs so poorly that it leaves 50 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered (Garson, 2010).

Today's health care system is struggling to keep up with the underinsured and uninsured. States are looking at ways to improve their health care systems to help provide for those less fortunate.

Discussion

How Health Care Systems function in US?

The United States healthcare system is designed on a business that looks for to make revenue, as well as provide a valuable products or services. And while this market is among the best in the world at what it does, the producing costs in addition to a for-profit objective have made their solutions nearly not reachable for many. Between insurance companies and immediate treatment experts, the old proverb "time is money" is a primary commitment with regards to how solutions are sent to the individual.

The payment system within the United States healthcare industry places companies in a dangerous position where offering quality of treatment may actually be damaging to the provider's ability to revenue. Payments methods and daily activities have taken center level in terms of what can and can't be offered for an individual, with cost-effectiveness as the rule of thumb. As a result, earnings for services is best acquired through investing little periods with people, offering little treatment and seeing as many people as possible in a daily time (Sultz, 2010).

Health Care System prior Affordable Care Act

Medicare is the one of the major insurance plans, before the government could announce the Affordable Care Act. As per a Survey conducted in 2010, about 13.5 million people out of 50 million uninsured individuals in US are elderly, who do not have resources to participate in Medicare programs of US. Further, only 40% people of total population of 306 million in 2010 are enrolled in Medicare and other programs, 55 % people are ensured by employers. However, this ratio is decreasing over time. Currently, the Medicare plan, which is the federal government's health-insurance plan, is facing a serious funding crisis. The program's outlays what it spends on health care for its beneficiaries are on the brink of surpassing its revenues.

That is when Medicare's primary source of funding, the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, is expected to run out, according to the fund's trustees. In 1997, the fund had a surplus of more than $100 billion. But it is expected to dwindle to nearly zero by the year 2000, to run a $53 billion ...