HRP 320 A2-Britney Smith
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HRP310
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Medicine
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Apr 3, 2024
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Assignment 2: History and Evolution of Health Care in the United States
According to Julie Rovner, Kaiser Health News correspondent, when she spoke to NPR’s Michel Martin, the trust fund for Medicare will run out in just a short 6 years, which means current benefits won’t be able to be paid (Martin & Rovner, 2023, 1:27). Rovner goes on to discuss three options or solutions to this problem; charge patients on the program more, make taxpayers pay more, or pay health care providers less, however, to not impact the beneficiaries, Medicaid would actually need to be the one making adjustments and the subsidies on the ACA (Martin & Rovner, 2023, 3:09). Medicare and Medicaid were introduced in 1965, a real game changer in the health care system. “By 1970, 20.4 million individuals received health care through Medicare and another 17.6 million through Medicaid” (Leiyu Shi, 2023)
. Although having more coverage for individuals,
especially those in higher risk categories can be seen as a good thing, it also creating more expenses. The “total state and local government expenditures for health care grew at a rate of 12.5%” and “in the case of the federal government, however, health care expenditures increased at an average annual rate of 30%” (Leiyu Shi, 2023)
. These increases were just over the span of 5
2
years, imagine the impact that has made on current reserves? As debt continues to increase and reserves continue to run out, the government has been trying to find solutions to the problem. Political agendas can play a big role in the changes made to our health care system, one example was “President Barack Obama’s political agenda trumped economic constraints and led to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 through ideological and political maneuvering” (Leiyu Shi, 2023)
. The ACA has several layers and impacts, Shi and Singh note that one of those changes was shut down by the Supreme Court, to deny government funding to the states that opted not to expand Medicaid coverage under the ACA. If that stipulation was successful, it could have reduced some of the debt we are seeing today. With there always a political agenda at play, when COVID-19 hit, it was no surprise the focus in health care shifted. According to Shi and Singh, public health resources were utilized to gain control over the pandemic and other health policy matters got moved to the bottom of the totem pole. Moving forward, no one really knows what will happen. Maybe the next election will
bring new ideas, new potential solutions to the table before our Medicare reserves run out. Or maybe, national health care will be implemented, only time will tell.
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References
Considered, A. T. (2023). What President Biden and Republicans are saying about funding Medicare [Recorded by J. R. Michele Martin].
Leiyu Shi, D. A. (2023). Essentials of the U.S. Health Care System.
Burlington: Jones and Bartlett Learning.
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