American Health Care Essay Research Paper The

American Health Care Essay, Research Paper

The American Health Care system has prided itself on providing high

quality services to the citizens who normally cannot afford them. This

system has been in place for years and until now it did a fairly decent

job. The problem today is money; the cost of hospital services and

doctor fees are rising faster than ever before. The government has

been trying to come up with a new plan these past few years even though

there has been strong opposition against a new Health Care system.

There are many reasons why it should be changed and there are many

reasons why it shouldn’t be changed. The main thing that both sides

heads towards is money. Both sides want to save money just in

different ways.

The movement for changing the Health Care system believes that there

is a need for change because of the problems that the system faces

today cannot be handled. Every month, 2 million Americans lose their

insurance. One out of four, 63 million Americans, will lose their

health insurance coverage for some period during the next two years .

37 million Americans have no insurance and another 22 million have

inadequate coverage . Losing or changing a job often means losing

insurance. Becoming ill or living with a chronic medical condition can

mean losing insurance coverage or not being able to obtain it. Long-

term care coverage is inadequate. Many elderly and disabled Americans

enter nursing homes and other institutions when they would prefer to

remain at home. Families exhaust their savings trying to provide for

disabled relatives. Many Americans in inner cities and rural areas do

not have access to quality care, due to poor distribution of doctors,

nurses, hospitals, clinics and support services. Public health

services are not well integrated and coordinated with the personal care

delivery system. Many serious health problems — such as lead

poisoning and drug-resistant tuberculosis — are handled inefficiently

or not at all, and thus potentially threaten the health of the entire

population. Rising health costs mean lower wages, higher prices for

goods and services, and higher taxes. The average worker today would

be earning at least $1,000 more a year if health insurance costs had

not risen faster than wages over the previous 15 years . If the cost

of health care continues at the current pace, wages will be held down

by an additional $650 by the year 2000. More and more Americans have

had to give up insurance altogether because the premiums have become

prohibitively expensive. Many small firms either cannot afford

insurance at all in the current system, or have had to cut benefits or

profits in order to provide insurance to their employees. Those

problems are just with the system, the main part of the problem comes

from the insurance agencies. Quality care means promoting good health.

Yet, the agencies waits until people are sick before they starts to

work. The agencies are biased towards specialty care and gives

inadequate attentions to cost-effective primary and preventive care.

Consumers cannot compare doctors and hospitals because reliable quality

information is not available to them. Health care providers often

don’t have enough information on which treatments work best and are

most cost-effective. Health care treatment patterns vary widely

without detectable effects on health status. Some insurers now compete

to insure the healthy and avoid the sick by determining “insurability

profiles” while they should compete on quality, value, and service.

The average doctor’s office spends 80 hours a month pushing paper.

Nurses often have to fill out as many as 19 forms to account for one

person’s hospital stay. This is time that could be better spent caring

for patients. Insurance company red tape has created a nightmare for

providers, with mountains of forms and numerous levels of review that

wastes money and does nothing to improve the quality of care. America

has the best doctors who can provide the most advanced treatments in

the world. Yet people often can’t get treated when they need care. The

medical malpractice system does little to promote quality. Fear of

litigation forces providers to practice defensive medicine, ordering

inappropriate tests and procedures to protect against lawsuits. Truly

negligent providers often are not disciplined, and many victims of real

malpractice are not compensated for their injuries. Purchasing

insurance can be overwhelming for consumers. With different levels of

benefits, co-payments, deductibles and a variety of limitations, trying

to compare policies is confusing and objective information on quality

and service is hard for consumers to find. As a result, consumers are

vulnerable to unfair and abusive practices. Insurers have responded to

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