SLP: Health Care Reform - Essay Example

Running Head: HEALTH CARE REFORM Health Care Reform Health Care Reform Advantage Health care and health care insurance is a top public policy concern in America and the issue of access to health care has become a regularly discussed issue in the media, scholarly fora, and among medical professionals. The goal of national health insurance system is to modify the United States health care system so that affordable, high quality services are available to everyone. The history of the American health care system illustrates the centrality of employment as the basis for obtaining access to health insurance coverage for the working age group.

The primary avenue to obtaining coverage for Americans under the age of 65 is through employer-sponsored health insurance. Employer-sponsored health insurance is based on the willingness and capability of employers to offer insurance to their employees and their families. The organization of the health care system, therefore, is not set up to provide coverage to all persons. Indigent individuals who are not employed or who have employers who do not offer health insurance coverage may apply to receive public health insurance, Medicaid (Schneider, 2002).

However social policies stipulate means tested eligibility requirements for Medicaid that exclude many of the uninsured (Schneider, 2002). As a consequence of the structure and organization of medical care in the United States, there is differential access to both private and public insurance, resulting in large numbers of uninsured persons. National health insurance system would benefit uninsured Americans by providing insurance and easy access to medical care. Disadvantage By most accounts, health care expenditures in the United States have gotten out of hand.

Rising at what the National Coalition on Health Care calls "the fastest rate in our history," in 2004 total national health expenditures rose quicker than three times as fast as the rate of inflation (National Coalition on Health Care, 2004). While the United States currently spends approximately 17 percent of the GDP on health care expenditures, this number is expected to reach upwards of around 19.6 percent of GDP by the year 2016 (Schulte, 2010). The NCHC study shows the average annual premium of a standard health insurance plan for an individual at approximately $4,000 or $11,000 for a family of four.

It seems that introduction of national health insurance system would escalate the cost of healthcare system. c) Why is it difficult to control health care costs under a national health insurance system? It is difficult to control health care costs because our system has become a seriously defective medical care system (Relman, 2005). According to Relman (2005) current system is “based more heavily on market incentives than the health care regime of any other country in the world” (p. 8). He mentions the current generators of costs in health care are “high business overhead, billing and collecting, profit incentives, piecework payment, and the entrepreneurial drive of income-maximizing providers” (Relman, p. 17). According to the National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC), facts on Health Care Costs (2004) experts agreed that the United States healthcare system is riddled with inefficiencies, inflated prices, poor management, waste, inappropriate care, and fraud.

References National Coalition on Health Care (2004).Health Insurance Cost; Facts on the cost of health care. Retrieved from http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml. Relman, Arnold S. (2005). The Health of Nations: Medicine and the free market. The New Republic. 23-30 Schneider, A. (2002). The Medicaid Resource Book. Washington, DC: The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Schulte, Margaret. (2010) Health and Hospitals. Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations: A Reference Handbook.. SAGE Publications.