Health Insurance in America

Essay by el35hsuCollege, UndergraduateA+, March 2008

download word file, 9 pages 5.0

Health Insurance in America

Research Paper

Assignment #4

Health Insurance in America has become increasingly more complicated throughout history, for those people considered poverty stricken. Solutions to help educate and finance health insurance for the poor have been issues for many years. A solution that has been in place now for many years is Medicaid/Medi-cal, which provides basic health care to those who qualify and are in need. However the un-discussed problem that has been around from the beginning but just not addressed is equality. American has provided the opportunity for a nation wide health care system but has omitted the equality of access in regards to appointment availability, specialty surgery (in most cases necessary surgery), prescription coverage and even denial to a primary care physician. These cost containment policies that are being implemented across the country are damaging our already frail health care system. It is time that the United States places the importance of health care equality up with that of education and state taxes.

A longstanding issue in low income health care has been the growing financial debt, especially in regards to prescription drug coverage. Dr. Peter J Cunningham, a senior health researcher at the center for studying health system change, states in his article entitled, "Access to Prescription Drugs: The case of Medicaid", that Medicaid program costs have become one of the largest items in the states budget, accounting for more than one-fifth of state budgets on average. Prescription drug costs have been one of the major cost drivers in the Medicaid program in recent years accounting for 33.7 billion dollars in 2003 and increasing by about 18% annually between 1999 and 2004 (Cunningham 1). Due to the increasing financial disparity, states have enacted some cost containment measures to alleviate such problems, but in turn have...