Public Healthcare Legislation the Public

Public Healthcare Legislation

The Public Option and the Obama Healthcare Package

America's healthcare industry shows us one of the most revealing contradictions in the country's economy. Even though America claims itself to be the world's most advanced superpower, it is still unable to provide its entire population with healthcare and even worse, the quality of its healthcare overall is declining in many ways that will be discussed here. Though many democratic nations provide all of their citizens with healthcare access, the United States instead tries to concentrate the control of medicine into the hands of big businesses like the insurance industry or the pharmaceutical companies. The result is that the United States has a healthcare industry with a reputation that is getting worse, with large companies benefiting but average Americans suffering from the consequences of this. Overall, though healthcare should be a right to all Americans, it is treated more like a luxury only available for those who can afford it, creating an industry that cannot continue on its current path and also stay effective at meeting its responsibilities.

This is why the Obama Administration has worked to pass a major piece of legislation designed to overhaul the ailing healthcare industries. With the focus on creating a 'public option' which would mitigate the cost of healthcare for the roughly 46 million who are reported to be uninsured today, Obama is working against a grain of industry lobbies and Republican Party leaders. These groups have argued that the new legislation would add 46 million Americans to the expenses of a welfare state. Amid these accusations and the expressed concern that the public option would promote excessive government intrusion into the healthcare industry, President Obama has advocated the public option with the justification of a severely unequal and ineffective U.S. Healthcare system. The discussion here provides a basis for the overhaul and the public option through a consideration of the current failures which have damaged American healthcare and which have devastated countless Americans.

Discussion:

The parties that are the most important stakeholders in America's healthcare industry are; the consumers of the American public; medical industry corporations such as insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and managed care firms; publicly provided healthcare programs or facilities; and the United States government as a whole. The current reality in the medical industry is that while the government and the corporations are sharing the profits of this situation, the medical consumers and the publicly funded, free medical programs are losing out.

Public health is the entity with the lowest level of representation in American healthcare, with costs of healthcare not just making healthcare unaffordable for a large percentage of the population, but at the same time making up about 15% of the national GDP as a result of the same cost issues. (NCHC, 2004, p. 1) This shows that the high costs of healthcare are not because it is getting too expensive for the average American to afford. Instead, it is because insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are trying to get more profit from the American people.

Truly, this points to biggest stakeholder in the current state of American healthcare. While the U.S. economy has experienced a continuing downturn in its rate of growth between 2000 and today, the healthcare industry has grown. On the power of employer provided healthcare premiums which rose by 9.2% during that period, the healthcare industry experienced an economic trend which sharply juxtaposed a rate of inflation one-third of this rise. This would prove a far stronger rate of growth than in such typically robust sectors as technology and retail. (NCHC, 2004, p. 1)

This would contrast the continually slow growth of the overall economy. Accordingly, Levit et al. (2001) would indicate show that a 'sluggish' economy would allow for healthcare to rise prodigiously as a contributor to Americ's overall GDP. Levit et al. report that in just a decade, its .8% contribution to the national GDP would balloon to 14.1% by 2001. (p. 154) These figures show the effects on the consumer, who as a stakeholder has been excluded from a lot of the decision-making processes effecting such things as healthcare costs and the laws surrounding them. The U.S. government, as a stakeholder as well, has devoted less of the public's financial investment in promoting innovation than it has in lowering tax costs for large companies. The government characterizes this priority as a way to encourage growth of large companies so that they can improve the quality of their service. However, the effect on the average American has not been this way. Instead, Americans are finding that the healthcare industry is getting more difficult to benefit from all the time. The demand for legislation is not only a public necessity, but is a government duty for which the public has expressed a willingness to pay.

A Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Health-Care Poll indicates that on a whole, the American public "believes that reducing the percentage of uninsured Americans is the most important healthcare issue for the government to address." (Cummings, 2006, p. 1) This points to the biggest problem that the healthcare industry must fight, which is the economic prejudice that seems to control pricing and access to decent medical attention. Unfair insurance practices like the high cost of premiums, the high cost of buying a share in an employer's company coverage program and the routine unwillingness of insurance companies to cover the costs for many necessary medical treatments have all led to a situation which in which roughly 46 million Americans are uninsured. (MSNBC News Service, 1)

The problem of a lack of insurance for many is related to the problem of the cost of healthcare. For insurance, medical procedures and prescription drugs, healthcare has been increasing in its cost for the consumer at a faster rate than any other industry, making legislation for a public option rational both in terms of assisting the needs of Americans but also in terms of intervening on rampant price collusion. One of the main reasons is the above-mentioned issue of insurance costs, which because of an unwillingness of the government to enforce regulation on monopolistic corporate practices, is a cause for the negative spiral of a rising expensiveness. That, some economic experts say, has created a negative spiral where the absence of more payers entering into the insurance market is making the cost even higher for those who remain. The consequence is that middle class Americans often struggle to deal with medical costs, especially when unexpected medical emergencies occur, even if they do have full insurance benefits.

Even in contexts where members of the middle and working classes believe themselves to be insulated from this crisis so long as they remain employed, employers facing an over-valued market has sought all many of ways to cut costs. Naturally, these are ways which have come at the expense of employees. In the 1980s, as the insurance market approached its current state of out-and-out private dominance over America's healthcare policy, "in companies without unions, employees were force to pay higher deductibles and co-payments and share the cost of premiums. Some employers resorted to 'churning,' switching policies just as the waiting period for employees with large medical expenses expired. They also reduced benefits for expensive diseases such as cancer and AIDS or eliminate coverage for these conditions altogether." (Quadagno, 145) Even for those who have been gainfully employed in white collar jobs, the failure of the United States to bring rising costs into check is resulting in a condition where such employees are increasingly carrying the burden.

The presidency of Illinois Senator Barack Obama offers some cause for optimism in regard to the situation facing many American employees who are carrying too much of the burden for a company insurance plan or those who are quite simply denied a coverage plan by employers. According to a journal article published by the CATO Institute, the president insisted during the election campaign that he would create a 'play or pay' system, which would demand that employers choose between a fair and equitable insurance coverage program for employees or the expense of a government payroll tax. (Tanner, p. 37) This represents an illuminating path for resolution that would use public legislation to foster a burden-sharing provision of healthcare to Americans.

That said, the current Healthcare package is in peril due to partisan bickering. Evidence provided here above and after denotes that there is a pressing demand to produce a healthcare plan which legislates coverage through public funding for uninsured Americans. This has been mischaracterized by opponents on the Republican side of the Congressional aisle as an attempt to socialize healthcare. Referred to as the 'public option,' it is so named because it would not preclude the opportunity to choose one's own coverage. (MSNBC News Service, 1) To the contrary, it would create a greater competitive environment for insurance provision, with the public option creating a more attractive coverage avenue for countless other Americans who, though not uninsured, are paying too much for their insurance premiums.

As the president works to pass what is most assuredly his most important legislative package to date, he is struggling against a great wall of opposition which appears to be driven by a philosophical aversion to public funding of a deeply privatized industry. The result is a tremendous amount of pressure on the president and a reigning fear in the public that he will be forced to capitulate. There are indications from the Obama Administration that the crucial nature of this issue has produced a distinct urgency in terms of passing some system overhaul. Indeed, this discussion generally supports this idea that there is an imperative to act in intervention of a wildly undesirable healthcare scenario. Thus, the nature of this legislation remains uncertain, and those who have desired the establishment of a public option and its promotion of social welfare goals may yet be bitterly disappointed. (MSNBC News Service, 1)

All indications are the severely compromised versions of the public option being pushed through Congress would also force the public to dramatically scale down its expectations. As reported by Whitesides (2009), there is a moderated version of the healthcare bill that is projected to assisted roughly 3 or 4 million Americans, a far cry from the 46 million reported in the same article. Whitesides also reports that non-partisan budget analysis projects a greater cost in premiums by a slight margin for public plans than for those provided by private companies. (Whitesides, 1) There are deep flaws here which reflect an attempt to sabotage the public option.

The contest between Obama and the Republican Party finds a fairly progressive presidency attempting to take on the healthcare system's current failures against the will of its small core of wealth opportunists. This helps to point to one of the greatest arguments in favor of the establishment of a national healthcare system, which is its overwhelming economic burden on Americans and on American companies outside of the healthcare industry. Indeed, cost increases have been so unnaturally discordant with the pact of the economy that the healthcare industry is in particular headed toward crisis mode. In the direction that the healthcare industry is going right now, "U.S. health care spending is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4 trillion in 2015, or 20% of GDP (2)." (Simmons, 2006, p. 1) This hurts the consumer more than anybody else. In many ways, these costs have already hurt many Americans and have already effected the cost of living. However, it is clear that it will probably get much worse without timely and truly reforming legislation. As the retirement population grows to a size that is larger than the American workforce, which many experts say will happen by about the same year as mentioned above, the industry could go through a serious depression.

The dedication of American public funds to a healthcare system that possesses the resources to cover most Americans, to hire sufficient workforce populations and to maintain high quality facilities is a clear necessity to the public good. And with respect to those who would oppose a transition such as that proposed by the Obama bill, it is useful to note that the rise in America's healthcare costs has not been natural. By looking at some of the facts related the overall economy to the industry being discussed, it becomes clearer that there is an unnatural inflation to costs. This is making hospital stays, prescription drugs, insurance plans and other costs that fall onto the consumer to rise at a rate that is higher than the rate of the cost for providing these things. Profit margins for large companies are growing higher even while people are finding it more difficult to afford their basic medical needs. This calls for the intervention of the government in the medical industry. The government must pass a piece of legislation with the power to restrict companies from exerting unfair prices on their consumers. Additionally, the market should be opened up to better competition, with more companies competing against a publicly funded option and therefore offering better prices to customers. The government has the social responsibilities to make it easier for average Americans to afford healthcare.

There may be very negative consequences to not providing the aging baby boomer generation with good healthcare. When this largest generation of Americans prepares to receive its Medicare benefits, it will be important that the government is prepared to support this expense. Otherwise, the effect will be very negative for our economy. This justifies the suggestion that either taxes should be raised, or that the tax burden should be shifted on major healthcare providers who benefit the most from the current situation. This would increase the funding needed to keep Medicare functional and offset the negative economic effects of the retirement of this generation.

This would also help to create the necessary funding to help improve public healthcare programs and also to invest in such socially constructive programs as public campaigns for awareness of health issues and hazards. This is important for reducing the impact of social inequality on healthcare realities. According to Marmot (2005), "a burgeoning volume of research identifies social factors at the root of much of these inequalities in health. Social determinants are relevant to communicable and non-communicable disease alike. Health status, therefore, should be of concern to policy makers in every sector, not solely those involved in health policy." (Marmot, 1099) By contributing to various initiatives such as the creation of ads about sexually transmitted diseases, spreading awareness of drug rehabilitation programs and making citizens aware of free health clinics, the government can lower healthcare costs overall by preventative efforts. This would be a constructive use of public funding to the betterment of public healthcare with few of the philosophical drawbacks that have confounded the current legislative process.

Another important element of the legislation to be enacted should be the creation and funding of various programs meant to encourage improvements and innovation in the healthcare context.. This would mean a number of useful programs, such as the creation of scholarship programs and wage-increase incentives for healthcare professional candidates. Nursing schools and medical universities, by creating financial relationships with healthcare facilities, can work to encourage enrollment and make easier the move from school into professional work.

Another program would also involve the universities, where better public funding could help to improve the ability of smaller staffs to provide better care. This would mean that the encouragement of technological and scientific innovation could be used to help create forward-thinking ways to improve our medical situation.

A change in the way that we deal with our healthcare industry should include a greater diversification of the funds channeled through public avenues and into the industry. Today, the healthcare industry is ruled by private competition, and this has had clearly damaging impact on the price structure of a sector that should rightly be determined by public need. As Creer (2009) indicates, "healthcare in the U.S. is currently in a state of chaos. Not only does a large percentage of the population lack health coverage, but overall we are increasingly paying more and more for what in comparison to other countries is a decreasing quality of healthcare." (Creer, 131) America's healthcare consumers are experiencing a decline relative to the experience of the citizens in many other industrialized nations.

Thus, with the passage of an uncompromised version of the Obama healthcare bill, the biggest effect would be felt by American consumers. The overall goal of these changes would be to help lower all of the costs that are related to medicine. Insurance costs should be lowered to at least be more proportional to the direction of the economy as a whole, instead of at a rate this is so much faster. Another effect should be that pharmaceutical companies, with better oversight by the government, will more honestly represent their investments into the research and development of drugs in the lower cost of medicine.

For a stakeholder like the American government, the consequence should be a reconsideration of the way that it directs the money that it gains from taxpayers. It is not a secret that many politicians are influenced by big companies who can invest large amounts of money into campaigns and campaign commercial. With better laws in place to encourage proper use of public office, America's lawmakers should be more likely to direct funding into free public clinic, into medical insurance programs for the poor and into improvements of conditions in public hospitals. Indeed, a more concerted effort to improve the availability of a comprehensive social support system for individual patients would reflect a constructive ambition for the healthcare sector. According to the research by Schwartz & Fronhner (2005), "a review of the literature revealed that social support related to positive outcomes such as an individual's health and well-being." (Schwartz & Frohner, 12) The government can help to effect these positive outcomes by contributing to the creation of such a support system which does not hinge on an exclusive access to insurance coverage.