Health Insurance Reform - Essay Example

"Health Insurance Reform" is a perfect example of a paper on the health system. Health insurance cover, alternatively numerous people referring health policy is a system developed by the US government in order to enable patients to access medical care in hospitals in the country. This program has been running far back as since WWII when Harry Truman, the president at the time, proposed a national health care plan (Cutler 24). Since then to date, the policy has undergone varies a series of changes due to numerous debates that have transformed to the current state.

Organizing, financing, and implementation of health care policy is influenced by various forces. These forces embrace the congress and federal health agencies in the executive branch of the government.Medicare insurance healthcare has two ways of giving coverage, the original Medicare, which is referred to as part A and B or Medicare advantage plan known as part C. Part A normally covers hospital care, skilled nursing facility, and home care, hospice together with home health services. Medicare part B covers services usually needed to analyze or treat a certain condition and preventive services.

These preventive services work based on preventing the occurrence of diseases or if a disease is detected in an early stage. Part B also includes clinical research, ambulance services, long-lasting medical equipment, in and outpatients of mental health, and limited outpatient prescription drugs.Medicare, however, does not cover everything. In certain cases, one will have to pay unless he or she has an alternative cover that offers those services. Services that Medicare does not cover embrace custodial care, almost all dental care, eye examinations whose remedy is the use of glasses, dentures, cosmetic surgery, acupuncture, hearing examination aids together with the fitting and routine foot care.

Lack of provision of the mentioned services tends to cut outpatients who require some of the services such as prescription and provision of glasses. Having to pay for these medical services is a major setback and yet there is a medical cover already subscribed.These Medicare packages also come at a cost. There is however no monthly cost for Medicare part A if spouses paid respective taxes while working, which commonly known as premium-free part A. Alternatively if one buys part A, he or she will pay up to 462 dollars per month.

On average this is quite an expensive judging that, a person will not get some of the required treatment procedures. However, buying part A requires one purchase part B that will cost an additional cost of 104.90 dollars per month. An additional cost of 10 to 20 dollars is added for the Medicare advantage package, which in other terms is a combination of both parts A and B with the exception of some plans in some cases such as drug prescription plans.The overall coverage of the Medicare insurance plan has exhausted most of the required medical care provided in hospitals.

However, the services offered by the different cover plans depend on the choice of the insurance policy one chooses. Choosing Medicare original over Medicare advantage policy is cheaper but with the Medicare advantage plan, one can eligibly apply and join other health care plans. Both policies seem vague on the issue of prescription drugs, in some cases a person ought to pay for drugs since they are uncovered in the policy.Both policies have loopholes that when purchasing any of the Medicare packages, whereby one is unaware until he or she visits a hospital only to find out that a person ought to pay extra for a service that was not covered in the policy.