Essay Sample on Healthcare Reforms

Health care reforms have become a complex social problem in the United States of America, and it has become a central issue that any president before being elected promises to solve. In the recent decade, due to the aging population, about two-third of Americans are either obese or overweight, medical care has become a very crucial issue in America. The American citizens require quality health care, unlike the one which was being provided a few years. The government and other stakeholders have to formulate a way that can be used to provide specialized and customized health care services to manage the effect of chronic diseases that have been more prevalent among the American populace. Health reforms require the involvement of all stakeholders to formulate policies that will help in alleviating most of the diseases and the effects of some diseases (Roehr, 2012,). Health care reforms currently focus on high-quality care provision at an affordable price to all citizens.

Many reasons make health care reforms a social problem that needs to be addressed for once and for all. First, little or no relationship exists between what hospitals and doctors charge for their services as well as fees for their materials and time. In most professions, manufacturers, services providers, and vendors charge a fee or price that reflects their expenses and a small or reasonable profit, but this has not been a cause in the healthcare sector. In other businesses, if the providers would not sell their products and services at reasonable prices, consumers would look for such goods or services elsewhere ("Societal Supernova The US Healthcare Problem," 2017). This is not the case in healthcare since even if a health provider charges a higher price than required, the consumers can hardly run away. An injured or sick person has no time or knowledge to bargain with surgeon or physician, and in most cases, the patients come to know the cost of their services after they have been treated.

Second, some scholars explain that doctors charge the high fee to compensate the high medical school expenses they paid while pursuing their training. The doctor acquires the training and ends up with massive debt that they are supposed to during their lifetime. According to a report released by The American of Association Medical Colleges, a medical school graduate has a debt of above $155, 000. Third, in the U.S, there are many malpractice suits accompanied by hefty compensatory awards because most of the physicians provide their services carelessly and incompetently. Some of the death that takes away the lives of some patients arises from the carelessness of doctors such as lack of disinfection in the health centers. Some doctors misread X-ray photographs and treat or operate the wrong organ. Physicians who have not specialized in treating certain ailments fail to diagnosis diseases like cancer in the right way and end up damaging the organs ("Societal Supernova The US Healthcare Problem:" 2017).

Third, another leading cause of a need to have a health care reforms is because most pharmaceutical companies are mainly concerned with profit making. This makes their products concentrate on indigestion, impotence, appearance, and other non-life-threatening condition rather than severe medical conditions and illness. The companies are only interested in targeting medical conditions that will lead to a huge profit. However, the drug may result in significant societal consequences which can even lead to long-term care that requires a large amount of money to deal with the condition. Fourth, many drug corporations are not in business to offer affordable health-preserving medicines, but their primary objective is to make earnings for their shareholders and executives (Harrington & Estes, 2008). These companies charge their products to compensate for the cost incurred during research and production. Due to the huge competition in the industry, some companies suppress sponsored studies that claim their products to be ineffective and hire other incompetent individuals who revise their publications on their favor. They also bribe physicians to utilize their products by claiming they are giving gifts to them. Some companies also end up lowering the cost of drugs to compete with other effective drugs that cost more. This in most cases leads to low-quality services and the patient might not get the expected outcomes. Most of the pharmaceutical companies claim that procedures for researching, testing, and approving drugs for use are tedious and expensive (Reisch, 2012). However, this is not the case because most of the cost is used for advertising their products. Additionally, drug corporations profit mostly from the literature of publicly financed research, chemical, and pharmaceutical research that they afterward exploit in manufacturing drugs they sell to the patients at unreasonable prices.

Lastly, incompetent physicians also have many reasons why they continue to practice in the U.S. Hospitals, medical associations, and academic medical facilities and doctors are reluctant to expose, report, and remove such physicians. The venality of these organizations facilitates these incompetent doctors to continue delivering services as they aim at making enormous profits (Persson, Rothstein, & Teorell, 2012). Some physicians fear to reports such people because they anticipate they can make an error at one point and their reputations will be lowered, or their license to practice be rescinded. The physicians believe that they should cover one another to protect their jobs (Reisch, 2012).

The major objective of health care reforms is to ensure that every U.S citizen is in a position to receive affordable and quality healthcare. This means the government and other stakeholders should take the right measures in ensuring this objective is achieved. One, the government should ensure the uninsured individuals are covered without increasing the debt of the Americans. Since most of the low-income earners and minority groups do not have insurance cover, the government should formulate a viable way of ensuring such people also acquire the necessary care (Five Health Care Reform Solutions that Make Sense, 2017). A good system to cover these people would be tax credits system and this system would not cost the Americans a lot of cash. Secondly, the government should consider fixing the current health programs to address the emerging problems. The Medicaid and Medicare should be transformed in the United States to meet the currents issues such as managing pre-existing conditions. Medicaid can be restructured to ensure it emphasizes on healthcare for women and children (Five Health Care Reform Solutions that Make Sense, 2017). The two programs should be updated more often to enable the health care services consumers predict the cost of their services and be sustainable for taxpayers and beneficiaries.

Lastly, the government should consider giving more training to the healthcare providers. The government should ensure it makes the cost of training caregivers as cheap as possible. This can be made possible by giving them low-interest loans, scholarship, and improving facilitates in education institutions. Giving new caregivers more training will ensure they acquire specialized training that will deliver the kind of care that is demanded by the current population in the United States. The government should also address the nursing shortage that has become a major problem in the U.S as the aging population is increasing and they require specialized care. By ensuring the care providers have the necessary training will guarantee the cost of care goes down, and the patients can receive customized and quality health care services.

References

Five Health Care Reform Solutions that Make Sense. (2017). Ncpa.org. Retrieved from http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18897

Harrington, C., & Estes, C. L. (2008). Health Policy: Crisis and Reform in the U.S. health care delivery system. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Pub.

Persson, A., Rothstein, B., & Teorell, J. (2012). Why Anticorruption Reforms Fail-Systemic Corruption as a Collective Action Problem. Governance, 26(3), 449-471.

Roehr, B. (2012). US health reforms offer a chance for primary care and public health to integrate, says report. BMJ, 344(apr02 1), e2467-e2467.

Societal Supernova the US Healthcare Problem: Causes and Solutions - Mark Silverman. (2017). Trincoll.edu. Retrieved from http://www.trincoll.edu/~silverma/reviews_commentary/the_healthcare_problem.html

Reisch, M. (2012). The Challenges of Health Care Reform for Hospital Social Work in the United States. Social Work in Health Care, 51(10), 873-893.