The current major healthcare issue in the U.S. is the healthcare system itself. The nation is more aligned with a sick care system than a health care system, which aims to manage disease than improve health (TEDMED, 2012). Therefore, it gives little consideration to other predisposing factors, such as food and housing. The other primary issue was expensive health insurance coverage. However, this was minimized by the creation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)-2010.
ACA is a health care reform that was signed into law in 2010 that contains a list of provisions having an overall intention of extending health care coverage to low-income earners and improve the quality of care (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2019). The ACA has impacted the health care system in the U.S. in several ways; for instance, it has reduced the proportion of non-elderly uninsured Americans and low and modest-income people (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2019).
One strength of the ACA is that it has succeeded in making healthcare accessible to low to modest income earners. On the other hand, its weakness is the individual mandate that requires people to maintain a minimum health insurance coverage level, or risk being fined by the IRS.
As an American citizen, I am significantly impacted by the healthcare policies enacted. This is because the ACA has expanded the dependent age coverage to 26 years, and therefore, as a young adult with insured parents, this has saved me substantial out-of-cost expenses. Moreover, my initial thought of the healthcare system in the U.S. before this week’s readings was that with the ACA implemented, the system had been streamlined. However, upon the TEDMED video, my perception of the system changed. As a result, I believe that although ACA has reduced health disparities, the healthcare system should be tuned to strategies that improve health instead of managing diseases.
References
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2019). The potential impact of Texas v. U.S. decision on key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Web.
TEDMED. (2012). What if our health care system kept us healthy? [Video file]. Web.