Assignment #7

Obama’s healthcare reform is centered on the idea of government sponsored healthcare which would provide a much many more people with health insurance. There are currently around 46 million people who do not have health insurance and this is the problem Obama is trying to fix. The average amount of money spent per person is $6,714 which is much higher than other countries with global healthcare such as France ($3,449). This program would be similar to the government run Medicare which is for citizens who are 65 or older. His goal is to provide healthcare for everyone at an affordable price. Providing quality healthcare to so many people will obviously be difficult and expensive. Many people ask where he is going to get the money to provide healthcare for so many people at a lower cost. The answer he has for this is that he will find the money in eliminating waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid and he will repeal the tax reductions that are currently in place for high income citizens. Many people already have insurance that they receive from their employer and under the reform they would be able to keep this insurance, but the Republicans have a different idea of what will happen. They proposed that many employers will stop providing private health insurance and will switch to the less expensive government alternative. This type of insurance would most likely be less costly but would also be lower quality. There are also many people who have pre-existing conditions who have had trouble getting insurance in the past. Under the reform no insurer would be able to deny someone because of a pre-existing condition.

Obviously the majority of democrats are in favor of the bill because they say that there are hidden costs that come from the massive amount of uninsured people which could be fixed by spreading out the costs. This will supposedly lower costs and improve health insurance for all. The republican stance is that the bill impedes the freedoms of the citizens. People who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder are generally in favor of the bill because it provides them with an easier way to get health insurance. People who are wealthier or small business owners are generally not going to be in favor because they are the ones who are going to be paying for the people who could not previously get health insurance. One of the most important groups of people the bill will affect is doctors because it is directly affecting the way they practice medicine and their salaries. Most doctors will not be in favor of the bill because it is affecting their rights and more importantly their lifestyle.

I am not in favor of the health bill because it impedes on the freedoms that all Americans have enjoyed up until this point. The freedoms regarding healthcare are being taken away from us and being dictated by the government. Some of the freedoms that are being taken away are the freedoms to choose what you want in your healthcare plan, rewards for healthy living, high deductable coverage, and the ability to choose your doctors. These are all essential freedoms regarding healthcare and they are being taken away. I am currently pre med and this will greatly affect my medical career. There are many instances where Medicaid cannot cover the actual amount of money that the medical care costs. The doctors often end up losing money on Medicaid cases because they need more money to treat the patients than is available. There are some hospitals that refuse to take Medicaid patients but the government will most likely force everyone to take these patients which will case many problems for doctors.

Assignment #6

The article outlines the current situation regarding healthcare and talks about how it has developed over the past few years and what is going to happen to it over the next few years. These statistics say that the amount of money spent on healthcare is increasing. There are different types of healthcare and both public healthcare, which includes Medicare and Medicaid, and private healthcare have increased and are continuing to increase. Public healthcare has increased more and is expected to increase more due to the increasing enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid. The increase in enrollment is due to the again of the baby boomer generation.

The increase in healthcare spending can either mean that people are actually getting sick more often and they need more healthcare or it can mean that healthcare is becoming more expensive because healthcare providers are boosting their prices due to the recession and many other less significant reasons. One of the obvious reasons is that there are more people and therefore more money needs to be spent on healthcare to cover the increasing population. These numbers aren’t necessarily bad because it could only be that the population is growing and nothing more, but population growth is unfortunately only a smaller factor in the increase in spending. The increase in public healthcare is clearly partly due to the increase of people, but the article does not state as to what the reasons for the increase in private healthcare are. My guess is that the increase is due to the increase in prices of healthcare with other factors such as population growth. The system is clearly subject to change and is influenced by the economy, but there are many implications that it will continue to grow as it has even through the recession.

If I could change one thing it would be that the healthcare system be more focused on public health related issues such as prevention of sickness instead of treatment of sickness. With this shift we could spend less money and have a much larger impact. The prevention method is much more effective than the treatment method because it prevents people from ever getting sick at a much lower cost than if they were to get sick and use much more money on treatment. For example the prevention of obesity alone would have the most enormous impact on healthcare that this country has ever seen. If obesity is eliminated then the treatment money of all the problems that obesity causes is nonexistent. This among other large scale changes would have the largest impact on the healthcare system and decrease spending drastically. One of the articles we read earlier this year listed the top ten most important public health improvements in the past century and in my opinion those had more of an impact on the healthcare system than changing any one thing in the healthcare system could ever have. The integration of public health into the healthcare system should be made the number one priority for the changing of the healthcare system instead of the newly proposed global healthcare.

Assignment #5

Even though there is an enormous amount of money being poured into developing countries the overall public health of these countries seems to be declining. This is due to many different factors such as the money having strings attached and the money not getting to the actual countries for aid. In Ghana where corruption is particularly widespread 80 percent of the funds that are donated do not actually reach their intended destination or purpose. There are many donors that specify how their money must be spent and these large donations are often not very efficient because they are spent on things that are not as helpful to the overall public health. There are also very large donations that are triggered by emotional responses; the most recent of these is the earthquakes in Haiti and Chili. Those two are minor problems compared to the largest problem which takes the form of the lack of health personnel. The majority of the doctors that are being trained in these developing countries are leaving due to financial reasons. They are being offered more money to go and work in other developed countries such as the U.S. or England. The massive amount of money that is being poured into these countries is being spent on drugs or items that will help the sick, but the fact of the matter remains that there aren’t any health personnel to distribute the drugs or take care of these patients because they are all leaving the country.

The two most important factors in determining the overall public health of a country are increased maternal survival and increased overall life expectancy. If these two things are rising then that means that the health of the population is increasing. But if just the elimination of diseases is focused on and these rates do not go up the massive amounts of money that are being used to aid developing countries is all for nothing. If the maternal survival rates are rising then more mothers are surviving childbirth and their children are healthier. This has a huge impact on a society and if this rate is rising then the overall health care is doing very well. Maternal survival rates also have a large impact on the overall life expectancy. If children are surviving past the age of five then they have a much higher chance of making it to adulthood. The deaths from diseases in adults do have an impact on life expectancy but nowhere near the impact that’s dying infants have on the overall expectancy.

In some cases the diseases are actually worsening because of the lacking of good hospitals and good healthcare that’s can help the victims of these diseases prolong their lives. One thing that is mentioned is the reuse of needles for patients. This is obviously very dangerous and can lead to the spread of multiple diseases. This is only one of many unsanitary practices that could take place. Others include improper cleaning of surgical utensils and improper testing of blood in blood-banks. Another failure is that many people are given HIV treatment but do not complete the treatment which just boost the resistance to antibiotics. They are then susceptible to many other types of sicknesses due to a weakened immune system and have a resistance to antibiotics which is a deadly combination.