Health Care Reform 2010

This week's topic focuses on the latest health reform bill that was recently passed in Congress this week. The health reform bill was announced in Iowa City by President Obama May, 2007. This health reform bill should focus mainly on reducing long-term growth in health car costs for businesses and government, guaranteeing the choice of doctors and health plans, improving patient safety and quality of care services, help maintain coverage if you change or lose your job, investing in prevention and wellness, helping to protect families from filing for bankrupcty or going into debt because of health care costs, and helping to end barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions. Based on all the main focal areas, this bill was created to help Americans who have issues with health care costs, but mainly to support uninsured Americans.
As far as the stakeholders who were most in favor of this health reform bill were the Democratic arty. From my personal opinion, I think the Democratic party was most in favor of the bill because they strive "to create a sustainable and independent clean energy economy, provide all American children the first rate education they deserve, and finally guarantee high-equality, affordable health care to every American man, woman, and child. " I found this statement on the Democratic party website. Although 34 Democrats voted against the bill, it was still passed. I think this minor portion of the Democratic party are considered to be conservatives and believe in limited change in the government. The stakeholders who were most opposed to the bill were the Republican party. They all voted against the bill. According to the Huffington Post, the Republican party is pretty much against "Democrats making fundamental progressive change." So the entire Republican party voted against the health care reform bill in order to stop the progression the Democrats are trying to bring in the country.
My thoughts about the health care reform are beyond ecstatic. I am excited, because I think this bill is going to provide a helpful service for uninsured Americans. As we discuss the issues with public health care issues, I felt as though America was doing a mediocre job as far as providing health care for its citizens. As rich as we are, our health care system spends so much money on health care, yet so many Americans are uninsured. The part that really upsets me is the fact that other countries actually provide health care for all of their citizens and have less money than the U.S. I think it's a good piece of legislation, because it shows that the government actually cares about the citizens and their health care. I'm not sure how much the bill will affect my family and I, but hopefully the health care system improves a great deal. By the time I enter the health care professional world, hopefully all U.S. citizens will have a definite availability of health care.
Until next time, stay healthy!

Kiara

The U.S. Health Care System

Today's topic focuses on issues with the U.S. Health Care System. For this particular topic, the article studied was "Health Spending Projections Through 2019: The Recession's Impact Continues" by Christopher J. Truffer, et. al. This article describes the National Health Expenditures (NHE) from 2007 to 2019. The projected estimates are based on the current spendings that are occurring now and the ones that have occurred in previous years. The three main sources of health care that are discussed in this article are Medicaid, Medicare, and Private health insurance. Medicare was established in 1965 for the elderly and disabled citizens. There are three parts to Medicare, which are part a. Hospital Impatient (which is the pay as you go plan) part b. Physician Outpatient (financed by general revenue) and part d. Prescription Drugs (added in 2006 administered through private drug plans and also financed by general revenue, payments from the state and beneficiary premiums). Medicaid was also established in 1965 and covers certain low-income groups of people. People that are eligible for Medicaid are children and parents, the disabled and the elderly. Medicaid is administered by the states and financed by federal/state FMAP. This particular form of health care is also referred to as SCHIP, State Children's Health Insurance Program. Medicaid is also based on a family or a household's federal poverty level (FPL). FPL is based on a fixed income for a certain amount of people in a household. For example, a family of three may receive Medicaid if their income is $2o,ooo a year (this is not a exact source, I just used random numbers). Private health insurance is when people either buy directly from the insurance company, receive it because they are an employer of a company that offers special plans, or they join cooperative and purchase insurance as a group. Based on the 2007 personal health care expenditures, Medicaid was 9%, Medicare was 22% and Private health insurance was 36%. Based on this article these from if health care are expected to decelerate by the year 2019 based on better financial expenditures in which the U.S. is expected to have in upcoming years.
Implications of continued increases in health care spending and continued proportional increases in public spending are medical prices and utilization. Medical prices as stated in the article are "influenced by economywide factors and 'relative medical price inflation,' which is the difference between medical and economywide price inflation." The growth of medical prices is steadily increasing. Utilization "which includes both the volume and the intensity (or complexity) of services" also accelerating. Though Medicare and Medicaid are both expected to decelerate by 2019, private insurance spending is expected to increase. Due to the changes in health care premiums and people who have high-costing claims, private insurance will constantly increase.
Based on the readings, class lectures, and common knowledge, I think the most pressing issues for healthcare reform are the issues that relate to spending. I think that there is so much money spent on healthcare and I personally feel as though the government needs to come up with a better budgeting plan. If I could change one thing about our healthcare system it would be the distribution of healthcare to all Americans. I think it is very important that U.S. citizens all have healthcare. I would change the FPL so that it would help families with a certain income. I don't know as of now how I would change these things, but I would come up with a way for healthcare to be distributed to all U.S. citizens no matter if they're sick, jobless, homeless, etc.

Until next time, Stay healthy!
Kiara

Global Health

Today's topic comes from the article "The Challenge of Global Health" by Garrett, Laurie, Foreign Affairs, 0015720, Jan/Feb2007, Vol. 86, Issue 1. This article focused on global health as mentioned in the title, but mainly the lack of resources we have available to the world's poor and sick citizens. In this article they discuss a variety of different issues that are affecting the world's health in countries like Botswana, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kadoma, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. The government does not have enough money to fund for all of these countries as well as others that were mentioned in this article. In order to fun for these countries there has to be a donor organization that will provide money for these government agencies. As government agencies sometimes raising money or have trouble receiving money from donors, most people just donate money independently of their government. For example, the article mentions "Americans donated $7.4 billion for disaster relief in 2005 and $22.4 billion for domestic and foreign health programs and research." This was more money than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had given away, they gave away $6.6 billion. I think that when it comes to global issues, Americans are absolutely amazing for raising money. As it is a little off topic, Haiti was recently hit by a devastating earthquake, and Americans are working hard to raise more and more money in order to provide relief for people in Haiti.
In this article that author suggests many reasons why in spite of the enormous monetary resources now available for global health, but we continue to see worsening of public health globally in the developing world. The reason I believe is most valid is health-care systems. The article states various times that in developing countries a lot if their doctors and nurses are either a) dying from HIV/AIDS or b) being removed by emigration and education to the United States. "One out of five practicing physicians in the United States is foreign-trained." I do agree with this statement. A lot of people learn and study medicine and come to the US for a better life. The shortage of doctors and nurses is a result of death possibly from exposure to TB and possibly infected needles from working with HIV/AIDS infected patients. In a recent reading, I can't remember what it what as of now, but when it comes back to me I will post it, but I read that in some poor countries, doctors and physicians use the same needles for their patients. I am not 100% sure if that is still happening, but it could be a possibility.
The two markers that are considered the most important indicators of the status of health care systems in developing countries are funding and health-care workers. These markers are so important because they determine the future for people in developing countries. Funding is important because these countries need money in order to provide their citizens with health care, medicine, and treatments. Without funding there is no hope for these countries. As far as health-care workers are concerned, if there are no doctors who's going to treat the ill people? There have to be doctors in order for the citizens in these countries to be taken care of.
Throughout the article, the author provides several examples of how faulty systems and lack of sustainability of current donors practices lead to more deadly states than initially encountered. Two of these diseases are HIV/AIDS and TB. The current donor of these two diseases are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation recently starting donating as of August 2006 and so far they have donated $6.6 billion. The Bush Administration as also donated toward these two diseases with $11.4 billion in 2001 and increased to $27.5 billion in 2005.

Until next time, I hope you've enjoyed my blog. Stay healthy!
Kiara