Throughout the history of the United States, healthcare has been one of the greatest systemic and policy issues facing its citizens. It seems that every President and every government was under the pressure to reduce healthcare costs, enhance the quality of medical care, and make healthcare insurance affordable and available to everyone. The past decade witnessed an enormous growth of the so-called healthcare awareness, pushing the problems of medical costs and insurance coverage to the forefront of the U.S.’s political agenda. Yet, even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also called “Obamacare”, the promise to resolve the systemic deficiencies in healthcare remains particularly weak.
Luke (2001) is right: the U.S. spends significantly more on healthcare than any other developed nation. However, the flaws inherent in the ACA make it impossible for the U.S. to achieve the goal of market-based, competitive, patient-centered healthcare that is available to everyone. The healthcare systems of Europe, Russia, and China are also of little help. Apparently, the ACA should be repealed, giving place to an entirely new vision of healthcare that is based on consumer-driven and market-competition priorities, which also necessitate the provision of new health insurance rules, the implementation of malpractice protection guarantees, as well as increase individual accountability for self-destructive health behaviors and empower all Americans to choose freely the most suitable healthcare plan.
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If I were a member of the new Congress and had the knowledge I have regarding China, European Union, and Russian health care, I would certainly repeal the ACA. Provided below are just some of the many reasons why the ACA needs to be repealed. To begin with, the ACA, or Obamacare, does not meet the standards of market-based, patient-centered medical care, by making it expensive and reducing incentives for continuous development within the healthcare system. The ACA results in substantial overspending, which does not guarantee any positive shifts in either healthcare quality or patient outcomes. Fitzgerald (2014) reports that middle-income families cannot afford Obamacare, even though they earn much more above the poverty rate. “The cost could mean a family of three earning $58,590 to $78,120 may be required to pay as much as $600 a month for Obamacare, and could decide health insurance is just too expensive” (Fitzgerald, 2014). Yet, citizens are not the only ones to suffer from Obamacare.
The ACA should be repealed, since it has broad negative effects on all sectors of the economy and social life in America. It creates a massive burden on the American taxpayers, leading to unemployment and reduced organizational efficiency. As a result of the ACA, businesses are forced into reducing their working hours. The employer mandate created by Obamacare is just too heavy to be carried by small businesses, their employees and customers (Graham, 2014). Simultaneously, the administrative costs of healthcare continue to increase, leading to substantial inefficiencies and making it more problematic for customers to obtain affordable, high-quality care. Suffice it to say, Obamacare violates the traditional structure of the doctor-patient relationship, defining the boundaries within which healthcare is to be administered to patients. It gives too much power and discretion to government and authoritative bodies, thus limiting hospitals and care providers in their willingness to customize and enhance patient care. Undoubtedly, the ACA is too deficient to embrace by the new Congress. What is needed is a totally new vision of healthcare that is based on the principles of market competition, consumer-driven efficiency, and freedom of insurance choices.
The healthcare systems of the European Union, Russia and China cannot serve as role models for replacing the ACA. All these countries find themselves in dire straits of healthcare remodeling. The Chinese system of healthcare is excessively focused on profits. Profit-seeking is at the heart of the major systemic difficulties in Chinese healthcare, from overprescription of expensive medications to extremely low salaries paid to physicians (Kaiman et al., 2014). In Italy, the quality of medical service varies considerably from one territory to another (Kaiman et al., 2014). Germany is probably the best example of a consumer-driven healthcare system, in which all citizens are obliged to pay contributions to a sickness fund and are given enough freedom to choose a preferred insurer, insurance plan, and even a general practitioner, regardless of his/her location (Kaiman et al., 2014). Still, the U.S. needs a different model of healthcare.
The starting point is the creation of an alternative health insurance system based on HIPAA rules. Since many Americans participate in employer-based health insurance plans, the HIPAA rules will be particularly relevant and effective for governing insurance processes within healthcare. At the same time, citizens will need greater freedom of choice, which is why rules that are similar to HIPAA will have to apply in the individual insurance market. This is how Congress will succeed in eliminating the existing payment and taxation disparities that hinder the development of a better healthcare system. The proposed changes will also facilitate the creation of a consumer-driven insurance market, which enables customers to select and change their health insurance plans, depending on their interests, needs, and financial circumstances. Meanwhile, the government will have to develop new measures to increase individual responsibility for self-destructive health behaviors such as overeating, smoking, and lack of physical activity. Finally, the new healthcare system should be structured in ways that secure patients from the risks of malpractice and, if such cases occur, guarantee timely provision of sufficient compensation to protect patient rights. The individual employer mandate should be removed, and the tax savings that result from the proposed changes will have to be used to support the poorest population layers in obtaining insurance coverage.
Overall, the analysis of the ACA in this class has been particularly beneficial for me. I could not even imagine that Obamacare has so many deficiencies. The new Congress will have to accomplish plenty of work, before all American citizens have equal access to a flexible, effective, and affordable system of healthcare that guarantees high quality of patient care and protects patients from the risks of malpractice. Of course, I am just at the very beginning of my professional growth, and I will need more time to understand how the healthcare system can be improved. What I have understood in this course is that the United States is not even close to creating a perfect system of healthcare that will serve the needs of its citizens.
