The Legitimacy of Healthcare and Public Health by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783031255922
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The American Health Care System

Pandemics bring out the best and the worst of us or, as Manos Spyridakis observed (2022), unity and distrust. In America, there are those who do not believe that health care for all is a right or a governmental responsibility. There is a prejudice against people who live in poverty, and the American health care system is no friend to the working poor. Poverty in America is not simply financial. Poverty is a way of life that denies opportunity, including for medical care, to a class of people who live in the land of the American Dream where all of those who work hard enough are supposed to succeed but do not. The effects of Covid-19 on these people have been out of proportion to the general population in the first wave of the infection and the aftermath. To understand the lack of opportunity, it is important to examine the health care system itself, the treatment of the poverty class in previous pandemics, and the experiences of patients who are suffering from residual symptoms of Long Covid and are looking for legitimate treatments. Knowledge and treatment of Long Covid are advancing, but the lower class has little opportunity for diagnosis and care. Therefore, in this study, it was the four middle/upper-class respondents who had diagnoses and the latest medical treatment.

The American Health Care System is fragmented at best, a patchwork of public and private entities, not universally accessible to all citizens. The majority of insured Americans are covered by private plans through employers. Government-funded Medicare and Medicaid provide health care coverage to the elderly population over 65 and the disabled. The government also funds coverage through the military and through Indian Health Services (Tunstall, 2015). Coverage for these groups has come from hard-fought battles for legislation initiated by those groups themselves, but in America there are always constant battles about who “deserves” coverage with a particular suspicion that the unemployed do not deserve governmental health care because they are lazy and do not want to work. The American taxpayers do not suffer gladly the concept that their tax money might go to the “undeserving”.

A February 2021 Gallop/West Health poll indicated that currently one in five U.S. adults, 18% of the population or 46 million people, are not able to pay for quality health care. That same 18% reported skipping needed health care or cutting back on necessities during the first year of the pandemic. The rate of health care unaffordability is higher among Black adults (29%) and Hispanics (21%) (News.​Gallop.​com, accessed 5/10/2021). It is well-known that health care is the financial “back breaker” for the lower economic class. However, the high costs of health care have even caused middle-class families to lose their homes or to accrue insurmountable financial debt.

The problem was addressed by President Clinton, but it was not until the Obama administration passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that the federal government was able to expand coverage. The ACA provided opportunities for insuring more people.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.