Health Care Issues
1. In your opinion, should everyone that can afford health insurance be required to purchase it? Why or why not? The affordability and accessibility of health care services has become one of the major issues in this sector in the past few decades. This issue has been fueled by the increase in the number of the uninsured and underinsured population despite increased governmental expenditures in health care. As a result, various initiatives have been proposed, developed, and enacted in attempts to enhance affordability and accessibility of care services. These efforts range from improving the affordability of health insurance to diverse kinds of government intervention.
One of the major efforts undertaken in relation to health …show more content…
The significance of requiring people who can afford health insurance to purchase it is evident in the fact that it helps them to avoid paying a fee or cater for all their medical care. The problem with this is that paying the penalty or taking responsibility for all medical care or expenses does not constitute health insurance coverage.
2. What lessons can we infer from history around the efforts to enact National Health Insurance and/or Health Reform? There have been numerous efforts in the previous decades toward enacting Health Reform and/or National Health Insurance. While these initiatives have been accompanied by tremendous challenges and debates, they have provided significant lessons for policymakers, stakeholders in the health care field, and the public. One of the major lessons we can infer from history around these efforts is that health insurance and reform is a complicated, divisive, and highly controversial issue that generates huge debates among major stakeholders. Secondly, these initiatives should be geared towards the realization of two major goals i.e. lower health care costs and better health or care services. The public always wants lower costs of health care and improved care services to be the driving force of all initiatives undertaken towards National Health Insurance and/or Health Reform (Pinkerton, …show more content…
These different types of government intervention in health care have been based on some economic rationales. These economic rationales for government role in health care include control market power such as monopoly, informational asymmetries, public goods with regards to free rider problem, incomplete markets, and externalities (Low, 2010). These economic rationales emerge from the fact that government intervention in health care is to correct informational mistakes that are common in loose health care markets rather than to promote distributional goals or social
1. In your opinion, should everyone that can afford health insurance be required to purchase it? Why or why not? The affordability and accessibility of health care services has become one of the major issues in this sector in the past few decades. This issue has been fueled by the increase in the number of the uninsured and underinsured population despite increased governmental expenditures in health care. As a result, various initiatives have been proposed, developed, and enacted in attempts to enhance affordability and accessibility of care services. These efforts range from improving the affordability of health insurance to diverse kinds of government intervention.
One of the major efforts undertaken in relation to health …show more content…
The significance of requiring people who can afford health insurance to purchase it is evident in the fact that it helps them to avoid paying a fee or cater for all their medical care. The problem with this is that paying the penalty or taking responsibility for all medical care or expenses does not constitute health insurance coverage.
2. What lessons can we infer from history around the efforts to enact National Health Insurance and/or Health Reform? There have been numerous efforts in the previous decades toward enacting Health Reform and/or National Health Insurance. While these initiatives have been accompanied by tremendous challenges and debates, they have provided significant lessons for policymakers, stakeholders in the health care field, and the public. One of the major lessons we can infer from history around these efforts is that health insurance and reform is a complicated, divisive, and highly controversial issue that generates huge debates among major stakeholders. Secondly, these initiatives should be geared towards the realization of two major goals i.e. lower health care costs and better health or care services. The public always wants lower costs of health care and improved care services to be the driving force of all initiatives undertaken towards National Health Insurance and/or Health Reform (Pinkerton, …show more content…
These different types of government intervention in health care have been based on some economic rationales. These economic rationales for government role in health care include control market power such as monopoly, informational asymmetries, public goods with regards to free rider problem, incomplete markets, and externalities (Low, 2010). These economic rationales emerge from the fact that government intervention in health care is to correct informational mistakes that are common in loose health care markets rather than to promote distributional goals or social