Prof. Scorefield

Health Insurance

Muaad AlMuwais

ENG 102

TOPIC:

Should the U.S. Government Require All Americans to Have Health Insurance?  

The health insurance is the critical issue among the U.S citizens. There are always supporter to a topic as well as opponent. The health insurance is the topic that has various arguments about the implementation. Health insurance for U.S citizens is an exceptionally imperative measure whose outcomes should be useful for eras to come. USA is one of the highly populated countries in the world. Its total population till June 2014 is 318.4 Million. The population growth rate of USA was recorded 0.7% in 2013. This increasing population is facing serious health care issues. One of the major figures is 45000 people of USA die every year because of no health insurance. Those who have health insurance face different kind of issues like under insured and bankruptcy kind of problems.

The U.S government should make this insurance compulsory for the health care benefits of its citizens. The safety of the population is more important than the argument about its importance. Government of USA is spending huge portion of their budget on health care. For fiscal year 2014 the government estimated total spending of $1270.9 billion on health care sector. Here is a snapshot of spending in different countries on healthcare till 2010.

The chart depicts the highest spending on healthcare by USA till 2010 and now the spending has risen to 1270.9 billion dollar. There are different elements and agents who are taking part in the high growth of these spending (Phelps, Charles; USA, Adissonwasley ,1997). This alarming increasing spending will lead to a deficit and in long run the healthcare will be available for high income group only. Following are some major reason why health care problems are high in USA costing too much:

1. Over spending due to overuse and unnecessary care for some minor issues where the less costly treatment and sometimes cure is sufficient.

2. Improper cure in hospitals also cause avoidable harms to the patients leading to unexpected illness and treatment expenses.

3. Billions of dollars are spent on early elective deliveries that could be avoided just by bringing some new laws and regulations.

4. Due to lack of transparency in the medical expenditures and consultancy fees the income of people is being spent without proper check and balance (Spurgeon, Loren J; U.S. Patent No. 5,890,129. 30 Mar. 1999.).

5. Huge incentives to medical specialists and pharmacists cause an imbalance situation where the cost becomes high where the alternate spending could be cheap and cost efficient.

6. Profit oriented hospitals and medical centers have destroyed the spirit of health care facilities where these should be purely government owned facility.

I have included all these facts to make sure that the health insurance is the need of hour for U.S citizens. The government should have to take an initiative about the implementation and make this issue resolved before any drastic situation.

Work Cited

Phelps, Charles E. "Health Economncs." USA, Adissonwasley (1997).

Spurgeon, Loren J. "System for exchanging health care insurance information." U.S. Patent No. 5,890,129. 30 Mar. 1999.