Healthcare Insurance Coverage in the United States

Introduction

The United States is known for its achievements in scientific study, advanced medical techniques, and its healthcare facilities and practitioners. However, lawmakers and the rest of the population are concerned with maintaining citizens’ accessibility to the system and the delivery of quality services. This essay will examine health insurance coverage status in the US and determine its effects on stakeholders while offering suggestions on how to improve the situation.

Source of Health Insurance Coverage and Its Financial Effect

There are several avenues for accessing health insurance benefits. Thus, this section will be divided into four parts that will address where medical insurance is generated. In the United States, it is believed that those who choose to protect themselves with their insurance make up 6 percent of the total population (Graves & Nikpay, 2017). Therefore, this group prefers to pay for their healthcare costs instead of utilizing the employers or government insurance.

The industrial sector plays a vital role in a country’s economy. According to some reports, the specified figure of how much businesses offer health care to their staff is 49 percent of the US populace (Graves & Nikpay, 2017). This is less than half of the nation’s insurance coverage. Government insurance is the third and most significant component of medical health cover, and this includes Medicare for the aged, Medicaid for low-income citizens, and Tricare, which protects military personnel and some Veteran Affairs protection (Zhang et al., 2017). Overall, this indemnity provides about 35% of all health insurance coverage countrywide, which is just beneath the employer-based cover for all US residents (Arbaje et al., 2017). These figures reflect 90 percent of all healthcare insurance coverage offered, including employer-provided, self-purchased, and government-granted protection (Graves & Nikpay, 2017). Therefore, even with healthcare coverage provisions, the US seems to lack financial security. Although Medicaid and Medicare are accessible to those who earn less than the rest, these programs still shift hospital expenses to the federal and state governments to cover.

The Effect of Patients with No Health Insurance Coverage

There are different ways that the uninsured demographic may impact other clients, practitioners, and the delivery of healthcare in the country. It impairs other sufferers because inevitably, people without insurance do not have medical security due to a lack of means to support them in the first instance. As a result, this population suffers from various medical conditions but avoids seeking treatment until their condition is critical. Once it evolves into a “life or death” scenario, what might have been a fixable problem of an antibiotic or bandaging becomes a hospitalization issue with numerous treatments and other different medical activities.

Thus, the above scenario raises rehabilitation therapy costs from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands or even more. Moreover, healthcare professionals who care for those without cover, the national government, different jurisdictions, and municipalities have long provided assistance to help pay for caregivers’ expenses for uninsured people (Garfield et al., 2019). Hence, the state and government are then forced to pay substantial amounts of funds that are uncompensated. Such a condition impacts the providers and those who deliver medical services since they both are significantly affected when hospital bills are unpaid. Consequently, when ‘uncovered’ patients arrive at the hospitals, physicians and nurses do not turn them away; they continue to work and make the clients happy in the hopes of getting them out of the hospital. However, when people visit the emergency rooms, it is because something is desperately incorrect, which implies there will be a vast medical expenditure thereafter.

Therefore, the uninsured population has an enormous effect as a whole because access to care becomes a concern when a patient’s security is disrupted consistently. Additionally, the uncovered individuals are more likely to deny treatment, which could result in an acute infection going untreated. As a result, it could then cause a problem to a broader population or even spread a fatal disease that could have been avoided with early continuous care (Garfield et al., 2019). Thus, it is essential to note that the acquired information indicates that the most significant effect on consumers is the resources they pay to health insurers for protection. Regrettably, this is used by the provider to offset the outstanding debt against the medical care shortfall.

Suggestions for a Reasonable and Impartial Approach to All Stakeholders and the Best Way to Improve the Condition

The best way to help address the above problem is to be persistent and take full advantage of statistics on quality of care and expenditures. It is crucial to ensure that the team in control of executing the insurance coverage duties is also responsible for ensuring patient treatment is of the highest quality. They should also be able to access and assess total costs when implementing these measures. Therefore, this would involve using updated systems to streamline information gathering, reportage, and developing the best data to demonstrate that the patient receives the best care possible (Garfield et al., 2019). Providers play a vital role in making health care activities and processes function. When a sick person attends a treatment center, the facilities are solely responsible for the patient’s satisfaction. Having the client feel at ease is one way to enhance the efficiency of one’s practice.

Furthermore, primary care spending pays off in the form of reduced healthcare premiums and improved health outcomes. Leaders in the healthcare industry must therefore stress the importance of increasing the allocation of funds. They must also transform the country’s “sick care” attitude into prevention and intensive care. Nevertheless, more family physicians would also be required to expand access to adequate disease prevention medical care, particularly in poor neighborhoods and hospital settings.

References

Arbaje, A., Yu, Q., Wang, J., & Leff, B. (2017). Senior services in US hospitals and readmission risk in the Medicare population. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 29(6), 845−852. Web.

Garfield, R., Orgera, K., & Damico, A. (2019). The uninsured and the ACA: A primer – Key facts about health insurance and the uninsured amidst changes to the Affordable Care Act. KFF. Web.

Graves, J., & Nikpay, S. (2017). The changing dynamics of us health insurance and implications for the future of the Affordable Care Act. Health Affairs, 36(2), 297 −305. Web.

Zhang, Q., Kariburyo, M., Xu, J., Xie, L., & Baser, O. (2017). Examining health care utilization and costs among atherosclerosis patients in the US veteran health administration population. Value in Health, 20(9), A629. Web.