Sociology of Medicine: Fixing the American Healthcare System Essay

The spiraling cost of healthcare in the American healthcare system has become a financial burden to the majority of the citizens. The Affordable Care Act - ACA (Obamacare) has become a talking point in the public domain with various stakeholders debating the merits and limitations of the system. While by no means not perfect, the Obamacare in itself is not a futile exercise because there are countless merits linked with the ACA. The limitations in the Obamacare healthcare system that have led to increased costs can be alleviated through various suggestions that may help in tweaking the system to accommodate changes that would lower the financial costs of health among Americans. These suggestions are practical and have a foothold within the American society, leaving political resistance and anticipated trade-offs as the expected challenges in implementing the suggested ideas.

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The leading change that would make a huge difference once implemented in the American healthcare system is ensuring that health insurance is controlled by the patients themselves and neither by their employers nor by the government. This will remove the dominance of employer-provided healthcare system by increasing the portability of health insurance which makes it more personal. Just like life, auto, or homeowners insurance, health insurance should be managed and controlled by the end user rather than being provided by the employing company or the government. Implementing this idea will increase accountability in the actual cost of medical expenses that the patient has incurred because this is one vague area that the employers do not reveal (Tanner, 2012). This approach also safeguards the citizens irrespective of whether they have a job or not. This is likely to get a lot of challenges because of changing the tax structure from the employer to the consumers. Besides the taxation hurdles, the implementation of this idea would cut down the costs of medical insurance substantially while giving even more Americans in medical cover.

The run-away costs experienced in the healthcare industry are highlighted by the Medicaid program (Fichtner, 2014). This health care program under the Obamacare has dire financial consequences both to the state and federal budgetary allocations. Although Americans keep coughing up money towards the program, the service delivery associated with it is poor due to dismal healthcare. The reimbursements under the Medicaid program are so minimal that the majority of physicians will drive away patients under the health program who end up finding their way to the emergency rooms. Due to this administrative bottlenecks, it would be prudent for the federal government to make adjustments to the ACA and allow the funding and responsibility of the Medicaid program to be under the administration of the state governments. Reverting the Medicaid health program back to the state authorities will cap the excessive spending on the program because it will be managed like other welfare cases where the eligibility requirements and time limitations will help streamline it (Barr, 2016).

Another effective way of lowering the high medical costs in the American healthcare system would be through increased competition that would give patients/consumers more options while dismantling the prevailing cartels in the industry. The fact that the citizens cannot buy insurance premiums across the state borderlines is as good as the creation of monopolies that have a field day in dictating how the health insurance sector will be run. Medical consumers should have the luxury of choosing from any insurance companies among the numerous insurance companies nationally, which will in turn force the monopolising insurance firms in some states to price and provide their services competitively. The variations in costs will enable the American population to discern on which company is the best to insure their medical interests. Even the states will be forced to come up with laws and other attractive policies that would regulate the insurance companies in their jurisdiction competitively. A nationally competitive health insurance industry will make the forces of healthcare demands and supply to reign, thus reducing on costs.

Aside from Medicaid, the federal government also runs the Medicare program where a better chunk of the healthcare costs are spent. This is because Medicare revolves around the health care needs of the elderly or senior American citizens (Stein & Chiplin, 2017). The program can be faulted for paying physicians for the amount of treatment they provide and not how effective the treatment is. The reimbursements also trickle slowly and they are low, just like in Medicaid, which makes some of the medical practitioners to drop out of the program altogether. The solution to this would be fix a certain amount of money per every senior recipient which the government is willing to incur. These funds should then be forwarded to the recipients directly and not the healthcare facilities or the doctors treating the senior patients. These funds can also be given in the form of vouchers whereby the seniors will settle on an insurance cover that meets their healthcare needs. This will eradicate the excessive costs paid to the doctors or their clinics where the senior citizens have received their healthcare treatment.

The other suggestion that could help curb the increased costs of healthcare in the United States system is the empowerment of medical practitioners who are not physicians. Just like the introduction of other insurance companies to increase competitiveness, medical consumers also ought to have options when it comes to selecting their preferred healthcare provider. Nurses, chiropractors, assistant physicians, naturopaths, midwives, and other recognizable non-physician medical practitioners should be allowed to handle certain healthcare issues in their communities. This would increase competition in the interest of the health, safety, and financial plight of Americans. This would pose a challenge in most states that have strict laws that prevent non-physician medical professionals from performing certain healthcare services that they can comfortably. Such laws will require extensive political lobbying across the policy making spectrum of legislators.

Conclusion

The implementation of these five suggestions will go a long way in cutting down the high healthcare costs associated with the American system. Revamping both Medicare and Medicaid under the Obamacare, increasing competition for the insurance companies and physicians, as well as personalizing health insurance from companies and hospitals are all sure ways of ensuring Americans will have to part with less money in their pursuit of quality and affordable healthcare (Pipes, 2013). However, making these tweaks to the current ACA will be met with a lot of challenges. Cartels within the health insurance industry will lobby vehemently against such changes while medical practitioners will not feel good with the bigger slice of the American cake being taken away from their management. Policy makers, legislators, and other healthcare experts will also be reluctant to make these changes due to partisan interests represented by part affiliations. Legal hurdles and court rulings are other barriers expected in the implementation of these landscape-changing alterations.

References

Barr, D. A. (2016). Introduction to US health policy: The organization, financing and delivery of health care in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins university press.

Fichtner, J. J., & Mercatus Center,. (2014). The economics of Medicaid: Assessing the costs and consequences. Arlington, VA : Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Pipes, S. (2013). The cure for Obamacare. New York: Encounter Books.

Stein, J. A., & Chiplin, A. J. (2017). 2017 Medicare handbook. New York: Wolters Kluwer.

Tanner, M. D. (2012, June 10). 5 ways to solve health care. The New York Post.