Topic > Why America's Health Policy Needs Reform

Many leaders of our great nation have sought to establish a plan that could take care of Americans, especially when it comes to rising health care prices and premiums insurance. “Nearly one in six Americans has no health insurance, health care spending is rising rapidly, administrative costs are excessive, and medical errors are rampant” (Fuchs Emmanuel). However, many Americans disagree about the nature of the Affordable Care Act and whether it will help or hurt Americans, creating a disturbance in the wave of many policies. There is one thing that is for sure; many people are not covered by insurance which seems to be extremely high nowadays. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To further understand this epidemic, you need to consider the past versus what the present and future have to hold. A large number of Americans have barely noticed this problem, yet “Barack Obama's health care law follows a century of debate over what role the government should play in helping people in the United States afford medical care ” (Fox News). In 1929, Dallas teachers were required to pay two quarters a month to cover up to three weeks of hospital care per year; Unfortunately this plan didn't last long. President Franklin D. Roosevelt spent seven of his twelve years in office (1935-1942) trying to create a national health insurance program. However, he instead decided to push for Social Security and established minimum wage laws and price controls. Despite these changes, businesses were unable to attract employees during World War II, even with higher wages, so they also added other incentives such as health insurance. President Kennedy's main campaign issue was health care, but he failed to get Congress to pass a plan for the elderly. Medicare (for seniors) and Medicaid (for the poor) were created “by the legendary tug-of-war of President Lyndon B. Johnson and a Congress dominated by his fellow Democrats” (Fox News). Both President Nixon and President Carter attempted to create health plans, but the Watergate scandal and economic recession intervened. Since 1935, most presidents have followed an agenda to promote health care, large or small, and have attempted to pass numerous bills, most of which have been postponed by public interest in other events. (Fox News) “[O]ne of the major problems with the organization and delivery of care is insufficient attention to the cost-benefit trade-off” (Fuchs Emmanuel). The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is presented to offer more pros and fewer cons to women than men. “Many of ObamaCare's new benefits for women are required by law to have no out-of-pocket payments” (ObamaCare: Pros and Cons of ObamaCare). Another expansion of health care laws was Medicaid, which was expanded to “cover more than 15 million previously uninsured and low-income individuals and families below the poverty line” (ObamaCare: Pros and Cons of ObamaCare) . There have been several positive aspects that have turned Medicare into the most popular provisions. One of these is increasing coverage options and benefits for millions of seniors. Hospital payments and home health care payments also decreased with the use of Medicare. “With the Affordable Care Act, companies are now required to offer coverageaffordable health insurance for at least 95% of full-time staff and dependents. If they fail to meet this requirement, employers could be fined between $2,000 and $3,000 for each employee each year” (Craver). Some small businesses and mom-and-pop shops are now focusing on the numbers and where their business falls versus how to grow it. Thousands of business owners and CEOs have complained about these new requirements. “It's happening,” insisted Joseph Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has 1.2 million members. "Wait a year. You will see a huge impact as workers will see their working hours reduced and their income reduced" (Myers). NBC News spoke with nearly twenty small businesses and other entities from across the nation, and the majority said that because of the new law it would reduce the number of hours for most employees. These new implementations have been dubbed the “employer mandate,” which has been delayed until July. Now businesses with more than fifty employees “will not be penalized for failure to offer insurance to full-time employees until January 1, 2015” (Myers) A recent Gallup poll found that because of the Affordable Care Act, only 41% of small businesses initiated a hiring freeze, while 19% experienced a decline. their workforce, 18%, has “reduced employee hours or part-time.” “Nearly four in 10 small businesses – 38% – told pollsters that they “gave up their plans to grow their business” in anticipation of the law's implementation. "(Renter). With all of this troubling testimony, it is difficult to see that only 0.2% of businesses that meet the criteria do not currently provide insurance to their full-time employees. (ObamaCare: Pros and Cons of ObamaCare) A Another problem with these new requirements is that federal law has lowered the amount of hours one must work to be considered a full-time employee, leading companies to reduce employees' hours so that they are not classified as full-time employees. full time and therefore do not have to be insured. There are dozens of different opinions, both positive and negative, about the Affordable Care Act. Some of the problems with the new law concern the financing of women's health services, such as contraception a pair of restrictions in the law, which prevent these services for women based on religious vocation. ObamaCare also standardizes insurance premiums and finds ways to reduce costs, improve the quality of insurance and inhibit abuses by insurance companies. Some of the health law's benefits include giving Americans access to hundreds of new health benefits and access to prevention and wellness services without out-of-pocket expenses. “ObamaCare is projected to cost $1.1 trillion over the next ten years, and for the program to work as intended, this will include funding from taxpayers and states. However, the end result of ObamaCare spending is a deficit reduction of $200 billion over the next decade; states also receive between 90 and 100 percent of the funding for most ObamaCare-related programs they establish." (ObamaCare: Pros and Cons of ObamaCare) When the new healthcare website launched, there were numerous issues that compromised the value of the healthcare system and the federal government. One of the main problems people encountered when logging into Healthcare.gov was that only a few people who attempted to register..