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Health Care Reform Term Paper

¶ … American Health Care After leading the world in the health of its citizens throughout most of the 20th century, the United States has fallen behind virtually all other wealthy nations in that regard, not to mention having fallen behind several nations that once relied substantially on U.S. aid (Dykman, 2008). While most of the developed world has already embraced the concept of universal government-funded national health care systems, the U.S. still relies on a for-profit model that has proven to be incapable of meeting the health care needs of society in any manner that is efficient, cost-effective, and equally available to all members of society. Even worse, the ongoing political influence of lobbyists for the for-profit health insurance industry continues to succeed in undermining meaningful health care reform (Kennedy, 2006), including by watering down the historic Affordable Care Act that eventually passed into health care system is not necessarily an example of market failure requiring intervention. Instead, what would be required would be merely the presence of the government in the form of a competitive option for consumers. That, of course, was precisely the so-called "public option" that many Democrats believed President Barack Obama abandoned much too early in response to Republican opposition, largely because of the influence of lobbyists for the private health care sector furiously working against the President's initiative. In principle, Republicans in Washington have embraced the position that the key to American health care reform depends on reforming the largest public health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and by tightening the eligibility criteria to postpone the entrance of new beneficiaries by raising minimum age requirements.…

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References

Dykman J. (2008). "Five truths about health care in America." Time, 172(22): 42-51.

Kennedy E. (2006). America: Back on Track. New York: Viking.

Reid T. (2009). The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. New York: Penguin.

Tumulty K., Pickert K., and Park A. (2010). "America, the doctor will see you now."
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