What is it?

Health Care is social insurance for the injured and the ill. A lot of the time the employers they work for can provide the health insurance for them. Medicare is Health Care for older people and Medicaid is Healthcare for those who can’t afford Health Insurance. Sadly though at this point in time not everybody has a Health Care plan or even health or life insurance.

Issues Occurring in the United States

In the U.S. health care is very important, but are we spending more than we need to be? According to Molly Edmonds, when we go to the hospital and we are told that we need to stay overnight, we have to pay 5.6 times more than a person in Japan would. Justin Decker states that people living in the U.S. not only have to pay more, but our country ranked last or near last in terms of quality, access and cost. It also ranked last in terms of equity and equality! That means that many people in the U.S. don’t have as much of the benefits of health care as others. Many people say that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, but it is shrinking when it comes to men vs. women, and the many different races. One way to tell how bad your health care really is, is to look at the numbers. In 2009 lack of health insurance was responsible for about 45,000 preventable deaths in the U.S. In 2012 that number went up to 48,000 people per year. Those aren’t the only numbers that have risen, in 2009 the number of people uninsured was 46 million people, and in 2012 that number had risen to 48.6 million people!

ObamaCare

As an effort to correct the health care issues in the United States President Barack Obama enacted ObamaCare or The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010 (ObamaCare facts.com). The goal of Obama’s policy was to provide better health insurance to all Americans in the United States. Currently it is legal for insurance companies to deny people coverage due to health problems, under Obama Care this will no longer be legal. While there is much negativity and pessimism surrounding Obama Care Americans are hopeful that in the end it will have a positive impact on the health of American Citizens. “ObamaCare requires that all insurance plans cover preventive services and stops insurance companies from dropping you when you are sick, as well as offering a number of other reforms and protections” (ObamaCare facts.com). Hopefully this is the step America needs to begin healing and soon bills like this can be enacted in other countries as well!