Essay Sample on Sick Around America: High Medical Bills in US Revealed

Introduction

Frontline delivered a documentary, "Sick Around America," that highlighted the challenges of being sick in America. The main difficulties pointed out in the documentary were high medical bills. Medical bills were associated with expensive drugs, costly treatment, and high monthly premiums for medical cover. In the video, a Harvard economist David pointed out that the United States of America pays very high administrative costs than any other developed country, which ultimately raises the price of healthcare in the U.S. (Brabantstraat, 2017). A few U.S. citizens in the documentary, shared their personal experiences when they needed healthcare services. The medical bills heavily burdened most of them while they struggled to enroll for a medical insurance cover. The documentary also highlighted that the U.S. does not have a compulsory medical cover, unlike other developed countries. The result of that was high monthly premiums form private insurance companies. A comprehensive medical cover to all will enable healthcare access to all Americans, as said by Karen Ignagni in the documentary.

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While they are all good reviews, the show was focused on the negative side of the healthcare system. For instance, in the case of private insurance companies, the documentary pointed out of the many rescission cases that the insurance companies made happen. While it is right for all citizens to have access to healthcare, both private and public medical covers, private insurance companies are still in business, and they have a goal of maximizing profits. It would, therefore, be reasonable for them to disqualify citizens who appear as "high risk" to them (Sick Around America, 2009). The documentary highlighted this disqualification as a negative thing painting a lousy picture of private health insurance companies. It would seem like it was an intentional act to reflect the state's attitude toward the private medical insurance covers industry-also, the sad story in the documentary of a girl named Nikki who had lupus. The girl died after being denied a medical cover by "TennCare" in Tennessee. The documentary did not help viewers understand that the state did not have sufficient capital to cover for everyone in need of insurance or what the reason was when Nikki was cut off from TennCare.

It was unclear and confusing about the role of healthcare provided through social insurance like in other developed countries in Europe such as the Netherland, and through private carriers, as in the U.S. This paper has mentioned about the shortcoming pointed out in the documentary concerning the U.S. failure to issue comprehensive health plans. The documentary did not discuss how the comprehensive insurance worked in Europe (Sick Around America, 2009). Only one side of the card was revealed. It was not discussed whether all citizens in those countries pay taxes for health care coverage or whether access to healthcare coverage is a matter of human rights, and that the government covers most of the medical funds. Also, the documentary mentioned five states in the U.S. who used a comprehensive medical cover, but one narrator highlighted that the premiums were triple because of late enrolment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the takeaways from the documentary are that: companies that offer good medical insurance covers like Microsoft are the "good guys," but when an employee loses a job in that company, he/ she is in big trouble. Another takeaway is that private insurance companies are "bad people," and the cover they provide only benefits them. The other takeaway came in the last minutes of the documentary, where former President Barack Obama is shown making a speech to the congress on the poor state of healthcare in the U.S. The documentary did not make it clear what the president in the documentary said that "Change is coming." A viewer would easily think that life in America was changing to a life of being led towards more private insurance covers for those people who are not insured regardless of all the shortcomings described in the documentary.

References

Sick Around America. (2009, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-sick-around-america/