The Citizens Health Care Working Group - Essay Example

Establish Public Policy that All Americans Have Affordable Health Care. Denial of affordable health care should be against public policy. Irrespective of the individual’s financial status, cost of health care should be affordable. It should be of high quality. This as a public policy should be declared immediately and achieved by 2012. No.3.Foster Innovative Integrated Community Health Networks This is in effect intensification of existing primary care level health care. With Federal Government playing a pivotal role and funding at the national level, a community network of public/private health care should be developed by identifying people and localities where high-quality care is lacking. No6. End-of-life care should be fundamentally restructured so that people of all ages have increased access to these services in the environment they choose.

Both public and private agencies should be engaged to arrive at an expert consensus on end-of-life care models sensitive to the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the patients and their families. Health care professionals should be trained to be proactive and to give personalized care with proper communication amongst care providers, patients, and their families. Funds should be made available at the community level to all possible support services that are non-medical with the objective of providing dying patients and their families with the best comfort possible during their last days.

(Citizens’ Health Care Working Group 2007) These recommendations will soon be in the hands of the new American President for implementation. The two presidential candidates Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party and Jon McCain for Republican Party have already spelled out there about their stand on health care as part of their election campaigns. Hillary Clinton is on record having spelled out her remarks on health care. Universal health care is her keyword as otherwise, she fears millions and millions of people will be left out.

She wants to encourage every American to have health insurance by granting tax credits to both individuals as well as small business employers to enable them to provide health insurance to their employees. Her reasoning to make health insurance within every body’s reach is to ensure that employers do not move jobs offshore for avoiding health insurance to their workers. She will introduce a system what is known as default enrolment in the case of citizens not talking health insurance on their own.

“Well, when I am president, there will be no invisible Americans and there will be no Americans without health care. That is one of my highest priorities, and I know it's going to be a tough fight." (Hillary Clinton November 28, 2007) Hillary Clinton’s firm commitment to provide health insurance to all the Americans sounds like it will become public policy in tune with the recommendation No1 above. Except for this, her deliberations are rhetoric in nature and do not seem to touch the health care needs at the Primary and Community level and end of life care as envisaged by recommendations no 3 & 6 above respectively.

John McCain also wants to make health insurance affordable to all. He will reform the system to maintain quality of care and to reach all the uninsured and rural areas. He wants to take care of the veterans who fought for freedom by providing them with high-quality care in their twilight days. Control of health care costs is also his concern. John McCain Believes in Personal Responsibility We must do more to take care of ourselves to prevent chronic diseases when possible, and do more to adhere to treatment after we are diagnosed with an illness.

Childhood obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure are all on the rise. We must again teach our children about health, nutrition, and exercise - vital life information Public health initiatives must be undertaken with all our citizens to stem the growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes and to deter smoking.