Research Paper on "Health Care Past, Current"

Research Paper 7 pages (2421 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

On page 155 Sultz explains that the university medical facilities were given federal grants to research "causes of death: heart disease, cancer, and stroke." By the early 1980s, thanks to taxpayer dollars, the federal government had helped increase the number of bona fide medical schools to 127, and though these medical schools were valuable to Americans, their services were 20% to 30% more expensive than other hospitals (Sultz, 156). By 1980, about 37% of the total income that supported medical schools in America came from "faculty practice plans" while federal research grants contributed around 19% of the income that kept the medical schools fully functional (Sultz, 156).

Today's Health Care Issues

When candidate Barack Obama ran for the presidency of the United States, one of his main goals was to reform the healthcare system, Martin Gorsky explains in a History Today article. As president, Obama set out to improve the healthcare program, that Gorsky asserts was "expensive, underperforming and unfair"; the U.S. was spending about 15% of its national wealth on medical care (the UK was spending just 8%) but 46 million Americans were without healthcare insurance (Gorsky, 2010, p. 1). Obama set out to: a) regulate the private insurance market; b) establish a "public option" within a state-run insurance program; and c) put pressure on employers and individuals to purchase insurance coverage.

My Personal Perspective

However, there was wildly loud and belligerent opposition to Obama's proposal to make healthcare more affordable and more fair and more available. "Town Hall" meetings around the country -- scheduled by lawmakers hoping to explain Obama's plan to citizens -- were stacked with organized opponents (many of them linked to the "Tea Party") that shouted down speakers and generally acted like the "brownshirts" that did Hitler's dirty work in Nazi Germany. That may seem an extreme example, but fascism depends on the rule of "divide and conquer" and this is what was going on in America. Lies about a "death panel" -- the false report from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin that with Obama's plan, older people would be put to death if they were no longer of any use to society -- were put forward and the public was confused and angry on both sides of the issue. Television cameras outside these Town Hall meetings showed men carrying weapons and the cameras also showed signs that depicted Obama as a Nazi, as a socialist, and there were very obvious racial overtones to some of the rhetoric and protestations.

African-Americans, Latinos, and other minorities and cultural groups supported the goals of the Obama plan, but the major opponents were white, conservative, and part of the movement that has been opposed to virtually every piece of legislation Obama put forward.

Professor Arnold Rosoff's Legal Approach to the Affordable Care Act

Meantime, on March 23, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law -- with a total of zero votes from Republicans -- but the future of the legislation "is far from certain," Rosoff writes (Rosoff, 2011, p. 2084). That is because during the 2010 mid-term elections a number of conservatives were elected to office, and took over the House of Representatives with the expressed purpose of wiping ACA off the books. (In fact, on January 19, 2011, the House voted, 245, 189, to repeal "the job-killing health care law" but since liberal Democrats still control the Senate, the U.S. Senate defeated the "Tea Party's" legislation 51-47.) One of the mandates of the ACA -- making it a law that everyone must have health insurance -- is a main target of detractors and is potentially going to be ruled unconstitutional by various state courts, Rosoff explains on page 2084.

Will the United States ever embrace universal health care? Why would countries like Argentina, France, Italy, Singapore and Japan have successful universal health care plans in place but the U.S. has balked every time the plan is proposed? Rosoff says that a measure "as monumental as universal healthy care" should be the product of "bipartisan cooperation" but in this present political climate, bipartisan cooperation is not expected to break out any time soon.

Conclusion

The thesis of this paper posited that politics has continually stood in the way of this great nation enacting universal health care. Until the toxic vitriol can be contained or removed from the American political scene, very little will get done vis-a-vis universal health care. That said, this paper concludes with the positive "real life" results that the Affordable Care Act has already brought to millions of Americans: a) women are getting mammograms at no out of pocket costs; b) seniors are saving "thousands of collars" on prescription drugs; c) young adults are now allowed to stay on their parents' health care insurance plans; d) parents with children that have "pre-existing conditions" are not being disqualified from coverage by companies as before; and e) seniors on Medicare are getting colonoscopy screening at no out-of-pocket costs (White House, 2011).

Works Cited

Daly, John. (2005). Professional Nursing: Concepts, Issues, and Challenges. New York:

Springer Publishing Company.

Gorsky, Martin. (2010). Good Health for America? History Today, 60(2), 1-6.

McCarthy, Robert L., and Schafermeyer, Kenneth W. (2007). Introduction to Health Care

Delivery: A Primer for Pharmacists. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Rosoff, Arnold J. (2011). Of Stars and Proper Alignment: Scanning the Heavens for the Future… READ MORE

How to Reference "Health Care Past, Current" Research Paper in a Bibliography

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