Saturday, March 9, 2024

Why Should The Government Provide Health Care

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Increased Availability Of Good Jobs

Can universal health care work? | CNBC International

Medicare for All could increase job quality substantially by making all jobs good jobs in terms of health insurance coverage and by increasing the potential for higher wages. While the definition of a good job is always going to be a bit imprecise, the vast majority of U.S. workers would say that a good job is one that pays decent wages and that also provides the health insurance coverage and retirement income benefits that most of todays workers can only reliably access through employment. Nearly half of jobs fail this test on account of health care coverage alone: In 2016, 46.9% of workers held jobs in which their employer made no contributions to the workers health care for workers in the middle fifth of the wage distribution, 42.9% held jobs in which the employer made no contribution to their health care .

Policies Related To Health Care Coverage

More than 90% of Americans have health insurance. About half get coverage from an employer, and a third get coverage from a government program like Medicare or Medicaid. Another 5% buy coverage on the individual market, while 9% are uninsured. Different policymakers see different problems with the way people get coverage today and, correspondingly, propose different solutions.

Some policymakers believe that current federal programs that provide health care coverage are too generous and inappropriately burden taxpayers. These policymakers often support proposals that would narrow eligibility for or reduce the generosity of those programs, particularly Medicaid and programs that subsidize individual market coverage, even though fewer people would have coverage and some peoples coverage would become less generous. President Trump has supported proposals like these.

Learn more about broad proposals related to health care coverage here. In addition to these broad proposals, some policymakers also support proposals that target specific problems with our existing health insurance system. One example is the fact that people with insurance can sometimes receive large surprise bills for health care services, discussed more here.

Cons Of Government Healthcare

Conservatives and libertarians generally oppose U.S. government healthcare mainly because they don’t believe that it’s a proper role of government to provide social services to private citizens. Instead, conservatives believe that healthcare coverage should continue to be provided solely by private-sector, for-profit insurance corporations, or possibly by non-profit entities.

In 2009, a handful of Congressional Republicans suggested that perhaps the uninsured could obtain limited medical services via a voucher system and tax credits for low-income families. Conservatives also contended that lower-cost government healthcare would impose too great of a competitive advantage against for-profit insurers.

The Wall Street Journal argued: “In reality, equal competition between a public plan and private plans would be impossible. The public plan would inexorably crowd out private plans, leading to a single-payer system,” .

From the patient’s perspective, the negatives of government-funded healthcare include:

  • A decrease in flexibility for patients to freely choose from a vast cornucopia of drugs, treatment options, and surgical procedures offered today by higher-priced doctors and hospitals.
  • Fewer potential doctors may opt to enter the medical profession due to decreased opportunities for high compensation. Fewer doctors, coupled with skyrocketing demand for doctors, could eventually lead to a shortage of medical professionals and to longer waiting periods for appointments.

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Social Health Insurance Model

Countries that use a social health insurance model require everyone to buy insurance, usually through their employers. Employers deduct taxes from employee payroll to cover the costs, and the taxes go into a government-run health insurance fund that covers everyone. Private doctors and hospitals provide services. The government controls health insurance prices. It also has a lot of clout to control the private providers’ prices.

Germany developed this system, which is also known as the Bismarck model. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, and Switzerland also use it. In the U.S., meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” also requires insurance, but there are many exemptions, and this rule is no longer enforced by penalties. It is also similar in that it provides subsidies to health insurance companies for low-income enrollees.

Health Care As A Human Right

Carl Sciortino Named Fenway Health VP of Government Relations

The only remedy to our lack of access to health care is to stop confusing health insurance with health care. Health is not a commodity it is a right.

There are rights to which we are entitled, simply by virtue of our humanity. Human rights exist independent of our culture, religion, race, nationality, or economic status. Only by the free exercise of those rights can we enjoy a life of dignity. Among all the rights to which we are entitled, health care may be the most intersectional and crucial. The very frailty of our human lives demands that we protect this right as a public good. Universal health care is crucial to the ability of the most marginalized segments of any population to live lives of dignity. Without our health weliterallydo not live, let alone live with dignity.

In the United States, we cannot enjoy the right to health care. Our country has a system designed to deny, not support, the right to health. The United States does not really have a health care system, only a health insurance system. Our government champions human rights around the world, insisting that other countries protect human rights, even imposing sanctions for a failure to do so. Our government is not as robust in protecting rights at home.

The United States does not really have a health care system, only a health insurance system.

Demonstrators participating in the Poor People’s March at Lafayette Park and on Connecticut Avenue, Washington, D.C. .

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Why The Us Should Have Universal Health Care

In the United States, healthcare has been one of the biggest political battles of the decade. As a healthcare worker myself, its an issue that strikes close to home. My years of experience caring for people with dementia, traumatic brain injuries, tetraplegia, cancer, and more has given me a firsthand look into what our healthcare system is like at the ground level, and its a different world from the vague concepts that politicians volley back and forth at each other.

Healthcare shouldnt be a messy political fight to begin with: its an issue of basic human rights. And what all too often gets lost in these scuffles are the people most in need.

Our police forces, fire departments, libraries, and even our military are all socialist institutions. Few people would argue for the idea of a private fire department that refuses to rescue people from their home because the fire itself is a pre-existing condition. So why would we ever frame the issue of healthcare differently, when its exactly the same thing?

Something has to change. Looking at other countries, the practical solution is universal healthcare preferably a single-payer system.

The United States has the highest health expenditure per capita of any country. With all that money being spent, youd figure that were all super-healthy but not really.

Pros And Cons Of Universal Healthcare Aka Medicare For All

Its a hotly contested topic in our country ahead of the next round of presidential elections: universal healthcare. But what does it really mean for medical practices and professionals? And why is it so important to patients?

While most doctors sit staunchly on one side of the line for or against a single-payer healthcare system, it does pay to understand both perspectives when deciding on an official position. Here are a few pros and cons of universal healthcare.

PRO: Make It Easier for Patients to Seek Treatment

Most medical professionals strongly believe that sick patients should have access to at least a basic level of healthcare. However, the reality is that a good chunk of the population cant actually afford the care they need to be as healthy as they should be.

Introducing universal healthcare would change all of this. In fact, this is where those in favor of a right to healthcare make their strongest argument in favor of the plan. By regulating the amount of money providers can charge for certain health services, the overall cost of care would decrease. It would also help adjust the cost of medications to a manageable level for more patients, which in turn could help the economy.

CON: Doctors Have Less Flexibility in Negotiating Rates

In addition to lowered costs, the other downside to government oversight is that doctors have less flexibility in rate negotiation. For some practices, this can mean a highly detrimental decrease in profit.

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Focusing The Work Of Healthcare Professionals On Patient Health

Most programs in this area aim to facilitate information exchanges, helping healthcare professionals concentrate on care and treatment rather than management.

This attempt to reorganize the relationships between patients, healthcare professionals, and administration is much helped by introducing new digital technology for exchanges between healthcare or insurance organizations and creating health cards. These factors can often lead to drastic improvements.

In France, with the universal health care SESAM Vitale program, for example:

  • Patients are now reimbursed after five days rather than after 2-3 weeks .
  • 1.207 billion electronic claim forms were used in 2020 93% of all claim forms with administrative productivity and treatment costs were divided by 6 for the claims in question.
  • 12% of the French population has a Shared Electronic Medical Record in January 2021″.

“Carte Vitale” is a card with an embedded microcontroller that certifies entitlement to health insurance.

There’s more.

The introduction of electronic claim forms and the cut in statement sheets means that 3,6 billion A4 sheets of paper are saved annually.

They are no longer produced, printed, distributed, stored, or destroyed.

Why Governments Need To Spend More On Healthcare Infrastructure

Why California is struggling to provide adequate mental health care
  • Innovations in Digital Care
  • Why Governments need to spend more on Healthcare Infrastructure?
  • Are Governments around the globe spending enough on healthcare infrastructure? Global pandemics like COVID-19 have brought to the forefront the need for governments to spend substantially on building healthcare infrastructure.

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    The Government Should Provide Health Care

    Introduction

    Our health care system is broken. If we go on without change, the consequences will be devastating for millions of Americans and disastrous for the nation in human and economic terms. Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1994.

    Today millions of Americans cannot afford the sufficient healthcare they need. Politicians, experts, and health care providers have warned for more than four decades that the American health care system was poised on the verge of a meltdown . Constant concerns about the state of the health care system produced many promises from presidents and congressional officials to change this situation, but brought few positive results. Today, it is clear that state governments should be the principal source of policy innovation in health care that will provide the public with sufficient healthcare. Government should ensure that every citizen, naturalized citizen, and alien resident is entitled to basic level or core health care benefits . It should also be a basic premise of that system that every citizen who is able to pay toward those health care services should do so. A major argument of this paper is that government alone has the ultimate responsibility for the health care of its community and not business or industry.

    Government Regulation and the Health Care System

    Insurance and the Government

    Funding the Government Health Care

  • Employer contribution equal to 3 percent of the gross earnings of each wage or salaried employee.
  • References

    The Interference Of The Insurance Industry

    When it comes to deciding treatment for the patients, it should arrive according to what the doctor prescribes, not according to what the insurance company deems fit. Since healthcare in most developed countries is so expensive, people have to opt for health insurance. Once they do, the insurance company decides what deems fit for the patient according to their billing plan. A patient will not be denied services because of not knowing a previously underlying disease by having a free health care system.

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    Thales A Significant Health Care Systems Provider

    Thales provided technical services and products during the implementation of 11 national electronic health care systems, including the German Gesundheitskarte or Chifa card, an eHealthcare solution in Algeria.

    Our contribution to these electronic health care projects provides an excellent overview of the technology involved, its applications, the quality of information systems, and the social context of its use.

    Furthermore, our experts have supported national debates on improving systems, mainly to fight fraud and cut the number of errors.

    Finally, Thales is an active collaborator in European and global standardization organizations.

    What Is Being Done To Promote Delivery System Integration And Care Coordination

    Two charts that should be in every health

    The ACA introduced several levers to improve the coordination of care among medical/clinical providers in the largely specialist-driven health care system. For example, the law supported adoption of the patient-centered medical home model, which emphasizes care continuity and coordination via primary care, as well as evidence-based care, expanded access, and prevention and chronic care management.

    The ACA also expanded the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ability to test alternative payment models that reward quality, reduce costs, and aim to improve care coordination. This trend has since been continued by public and private payers.

    One of these alternative payment models is bundled payments, whereby a single payment is made for all the services delivered by multiple providers for a single episode of care. Another trend is the proliferation of accountable care organizations . These networks of providers assume contractual responsibility for providing a defined population with care that meets quality targets. Providers in ACOs share in the savings that constitute the difference between forecasted and actual health care spending.

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    Stimulus Responses Of Governments For Covid

    Most of the governments around the world are increasing expenditure and providing financial stimulus packages for dealing with the COVID-19 devastation to the economy. But what if COVID-19 becomes a part of our lives and we have to live with it in the future. Or we see similar pandemics in the coming years? Would it not be wise to spend substantially on healthcare and its infrastructure instead? This could atleast ensure that we can deal with healthcare situaltions and still go about doing our businesses as usual. Surprisingly, not much is being spent on healthcare in response to COVID-19. With trillions of dollars going as business incentives and other reliefs, not enough is being spent on building capacity of healthcare. Infact, most of the medical staff dealing with COVID-19 around the world is still complaining about critical shortages of equipments like ventilators and personal protective equipment .

    Free Healthcare Will Make People Care Less About Their Health

    When financial coverage is provided to people, they mostly ignore their health. For instance, neglect the importance of eating healthy, staying fit, and taking proper precautions, and will adopt an unhealthy lifestyle that eventually harms them. And all of this because they know they wont have to pay anything for their healthcare.

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    Employment Effects Of Fundamental Health Reform: Gains In Health Care Losses In Insurance And Billingwith Likely Economywide Net Job Gains From Rising Economic Demand

    Like all positive productivity gains, Medicare for All would be more likely to increase the total number of jobs in the U.S. economy, even as health reform leads to the redeployment of workers from some sectors and into others.

    Despite the many labor market benefits of fundamental health reform like M4A, many critics have claimed that such reform would lead to a loss of jobs. This claim is misleading. One small grain of truth to it is that the universal provision of health insurance would allow people who would strongly prefer not to work , but who have remained in their current jobs in order to retain health insurance, to be free to quit. This type of voluntary reduction in labor supply following a health reform would be strongly welfare-improving. For example, the ACA was clearly associated with a large increase in parents with young children transitioning to part-time work . To the degree this occurred because these parents no longer needed to work full time to obtain ESI, and they preferred spending more time with their children for reasons of worklife balance, it should be seen as a clear win for the policy.

    What Is Universal Health Care

    Obama: Why Gov’t Should Get Involved in Health Care

    Kimberly Amadeo is an expert on U.S. and world economies and investing, with over 20 years of experience in economic analysis and business strategy. She is the President of the economic website World Money Watch. As a writer for The Balance, Kimberly provides insight on the state of the present-day economy, as well as past events that have had a lasting impact.

    The Balance / Nusha Ashjaee

    Universal health care is a system that provides quality medical services to all citizens. The federal government offers it to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.

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    Comparing Universal Health Care To The Us System

    The United States has a mixture of government-run and private insurance.

    As a result, in 2020, 66.5% of Americans had private health insurance, mostly from their employers. The government subsidizes private health insurance through Obamacare. Another 34.8% of Americans had public government coverage. This includes Medicaid, Medicare, Children’s Health Insurance Program, and military coverage including the Veterans Administration. Only 8.6% had no coverage at all.

    All health care service providers, except for the VA, are private. Some democratic candidates have promoted universal health care under the title “Medicare for All.”

    In 2019, health care cost 16.8% of GDP. That was a staggering US$10,948 per person. The infant mortality rate was 5.4%, significantly higher than that of countries such as Australia and Germany.

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