OPPapers.com

The Need For Healthcare Reform In America

The healthcare model in the United States is deeply flawed with spiraling costs, rising numbers of uninsured citizens, limitations on the plans of those with insurance coverage, and deficiencies of the government sponsored health plans. According to a Commonwealth Fund survey in 2004, the American people have a more negative view of their healthcare system than their counterparts in the other industrialized nations with a third of Americans insisting on a restructuring of the system. Looking at the numerous issues that plague the current system, the best option to meet the immense need and widespread desire for accessible quality is a single payer, or socialized, healthcare model. While every other industrial nation, such as Denmark, Japan, Germany, Australia, and Norway, have a national system of universal coverage, the United States allows many to go uninsured and divides the right to healthcare from everyone to those who can afford it. The statistical data demonstrates the discrepancy in healthcare among those of different social-economic classes, proving an ever widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, and exposing just how flawed the American healthcare system is.
America's healthcare history is punctuated with milestones in an effort to either expand or modify the system. Beginning in the first part of the 20th century, there was discussions about bringing health care to the average American. It wasn't until the Roosevelt Administration that there was a serious push towards health insurance with President Roosevelt requesting an "economic bill of rights" from the Congress that included a right to adequate medical care. In the 1950's, hospital care doubles and President Truman suggested a single system national health program that would have included everyone in American society. This was the first serious attempt at universal care, and like successive attempts, was defeated and denounced by the American Medical Association (AMA) and labeled by a House...