Health care is one of the most hectic issues that the United States has had to deal with for so many years. The leadership of the country has been under pressure in the recent years to try to establish a permanent solution to the health care problem. The country’s population is expanding and aging at the same on a daily basis. This population has been increasingly demanding inexpensive medical services to help it remain healthy (Long and Masi 578).
To develop health care systems in the United States, its leaders should emulate other countries that have succeeded in the sector. The People’s Republic of China is one of those countries that have well-developed health care systems that adequately cater for the medical needs of their citizens. China, in particular, has a nationalized health care system that is controlled entirely by the government (Niles 74).
Although most Americans do not support the plan to adopt the Chinese health care system for fear that it may be manipulated by the government, the system offers a better solution to the health care problem in the U.S. If the Chinese system cannot be approved fully, at least it should be implemented partially.
Nevertheless, finding the best solution to the United States’ health care problem requires more than just adopting health care systems of other countries. Americans need a comprehensive and effective health care scheme that can solve their “present and future medical needs” (Brecher, Costello, and Smith 1).
The American health care system has evolved through several stages in many years. It can be traced from as far as mid 1700s when the earliest life insurance scheme was established in the country (“The Long Road” 16). However, proper health insurance plans came to existence in the 1850s, when Massachusetts, through the Franklin Health Assurance Company, began to offer accident insurance to its citizens.
The accident insurance scheme catered for injuries that were incurred as a result of steamboat transport hitches and railroad accidents. It was after the initiation of the Franklin Company that several plans emerged, which covered all the common types of injuries and sicknesses (Long and Masi 583).
However, the main medical insurance schemes in America were established too late. The medical schemes were established from 1930 onwards. There are a number of reasons that prevented an early invention of the medical plans. One of the major reasons is “the poor quality of the health care that was offered at the time” (Quadagno 18).
The quality was so poor that the majority of Americans shunned hospitals terming them as unreliable. The schemes offered at the time were only meant to compensate the sick people for their inability to make money as they could not work. The schemes did not cover the “medical bills that people incurred in the hospital” (Long and Masi 585).
The country’s medical system received major boost between 1900 and 1940. The health care scheme, for instance, incorporated several aspects, such as vaccines, diagnoses of infectious diseases, measures for blood pressure, and X-ray technology, into the system. These advancements were legitimized by the creation of medical regulations to guide the practices of physicians (Harrington and Estes 30).
For instance, the American Medical Association, established the Council on Medical Education in 1904, to develop and implement medical standards through issuance of medical licenses. There occurred another step in 1913 after the Council on Medical Education was founded. The American College of Surgeons, a body that was supposed to regulate the accreditation of medical institution, came to existence. The college closed down by 1915 but more than 35 medical schools had been found to be unfit (Niles 74).
The modern day health care insurance plans sprang up in 1929 and in the early 1930s as a result of several factors. The first one was the increase of demand for medical services from the citizens. The second factor was the limited supply of medical equipment hospitals and the low number of health practitioners, which could not meet the high demand. As a result, “the medical cost increased so much that many citizens could not afford to pay for their medical services” (Long and Stockley 1234).
Different personalities came up with different plans to cater for the country’s population. For example, Dr. Justin Ford Kimball is remembered for the part he played in the development of the modern health care system in 1929. Justin developed a system called the Baylor Plan, in which teachers were required to contribute 50 cents every month to cater for their medical services for a period of up to 21 days per year (Greenwald 35).
Many hospitals, after the occurrence of the Great Depression in 1930, were forced to begin offering medical plans to their clients and they adopted the Baylor Plan. The schemes, most of which were prepaid, not only enabled the subscribers to get affordable medical coverage, but it also enabled the hospitals to receive constant income in spite of the staggering state of economy at that time (Long and Stockley 1239).
Toward the end of the 1940s, several private, commercial medical insurance plans had developed. The companies that offered the plan introduced premium charges based on the relative risk, which saw older people paying more than any other group (Quadagno 18). The Blue Shield and Blue Cross plans, which were by that time regarded as not-for-profit schemes, eventually began to charge premiums for fear of losing business to the commercial companies.
The presence of successful health care schemes in the 1950s kept the government from involving in the schemes. However, in 1965, the government intervened and introduced Medicaid and Medicare programs to complement the plans that were offered by the private sector (“The Long Road” 16).
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of technologies were introduced into the medical field making the plans very expensive to the common citizens. The Congress responded by pushing for development of other schemes to cater for the poor. As a result of the Congress’ efforts, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Mental Health Parity Act came to existence in mid 1990s (Harrington and Estes 31).
Before these plans that were enacted by the Congress, President Bill Clinton had made a proposal in 1993 to enact a universal medical plan in the country. However, Bill’s proposal was blocked before it could be implemented. President George Bush’s “attempts in 2003 to add more contents to the Medicare program were also thwarted” (“The Long Road” 16).
Since 2003, several attempts to develop a national health care system in the United States have been made by different personalities, but none of them has succeeded. There is a lot of politics in the medical field, which frustrates the development of some of the plans that seem to care for the poor.
As a result of the rising medical costs, “very many people in the United States remain uninsured” (Greenwald 35). For instance, a study conducted in 2007 by the U.S. Census of Bureau found that more than 15% of the country’s population was not covered by any medical plan. Before thinking about the best kind of health care plan to develop for the citizens, the personalities involved should keep politics aside (Brecher, Costello, and Smith 1).
Works Cited
Brecher, Jeremy, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith. How the American Health Care System got That Way. Truthout, Dec. 2008. Web.
Greenwald, Howard P. Health Care in the United States: Organization, Management, and Policy. San Fransico, CA: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print.
Harrington, Charlene, and Carroll L. Estes. Health Policy: Crisis and Reform in the U.S. Health Care Delivery System. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Pub., 2008. Print.
Long, Sharon, and Karen Stockley. “Sustaining Health Reform in a Recession: An Update on Massachusetts As of Fall 2009.” Health Affairs 29.6 (2010): 1234- 1241. Print.
Long, Sharon, and Paul Masi. “Access and Affordability: An Update on Health Reform in Massachusetts.” Health Affairs 28.4 (2009): 578-587. Print.
Niles, Nancy J. Basic of the U.S. Health Care System. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2011. Print.
Quadagno, Jill Sobel. One Nation, Uninsured: Why the U.S. Has No National Health Insurance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.
“The Long, Long Road to National Health Reform (A Short History).” Modern Health Care 40.13 (2010): 16-16. Print.