Health Care Funding in the US, Essay Sample at No Charge

The United States is among the countries that have the most advanced health care systems in the world. This advancement has also seen the rise in the expenditure in the health section. The overall funding always puts a strain on the economy of the country. Sometimes the higher costs have been termed as unsustainable by critics saying that a lot of money is spent in the health care. In the US there are three arms that fund or finance the health care system. Health care is paid by the government through its various programs, it is also paid by private insurance plans and this applies to those with employment and finally it is also funded through out-of-pocket or personal funds. For many years the money that has been spent in health care has been rising very much. Not all people have insurance in the US and the number has seen a major drop especially with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014. The US government is looking for all possible ways to have more people insured hence reducing the costs of accessing health care.

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Private insurance is one of the major players in the financing of health care in the US. The insurance companies are usually categorized into two that is for-profit and not-for-profit. Employees benefit from insurance bought by the corporations. These costs of the insurance are usually covered by both the employers and employees. Some people can also buy private health insurance for themselves and their families. With the introduction of the Affordable Care Act in 2014, the intended goal is to have an increase in the availability of insurance and this achieved through making the insurance affordable. The ACA work involves expanding the insurance market and here it is the private insurance market. They do this by creating incentives for employers to provide insurance to their employees. The people who are not covered by the employers or the government are required to purchase private insurance plans. ACA usually creates health insurance exchanges and these are usually regulated by the government and sold by private insurance companies.

The second financer of health in the US is the Government through its insurance programs. Currently, the government has two big insurance programs and that is Medicare and Medicaid. The Medicare usually funds health care especially for elderly people, the disabled and the people who are under long-term treatment for example people receiving dialysis. On the other hand, Medicaid is the program that funds health care for the people who are living in poverty and also those with disabilities. This makes it easy for those living below the poverty line access medical care at affordable rates. We have other programs that cover specific groups of people for instance State Children's Insurance Program which covers children who are uninsured from families which are poor. We have also Tricare that covers military people and their families. The veterans' health administration covers veteran military officers. The Indian health services cover American Indians and Alaskans. As it stands today overall the government covers up to 35% of the Americans.

Lastly, we have the out-of-pocket covers; this is whereby the individual is not covered by any of the programs so they use their own money to pay for their health bills. In the US today more than 17% of the health costs are usually part of the out-of-pocket and this is very expensive as a treatment in the US is very high in terms of costs. There is the Flexible spending accounts and the Health saving accounts.

Although the United Starts happens to have the best medical and health care system it also uses the most money in funding it. The health system consumes a lot of the economy and the government continues to improve it on daily basis.

References

National Health Expenditures Summary including share of GDP, CY 1960-2016-Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services