Should Medicare be Sustained?

Among the multiple attempts to improve the existing healthcare system in the United States of America, the Administration of the current President has done the most to amend the situation. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), or better known as Obamacare, was issued by the Congress as the remedy for the disorderly medical system and as the maintenance to help the small businesses.

Thus, a heated discussion ensued as to whether the investment was worth the outcome or not. The major argument questioned is if the program was worth spending money that comes from taxes when it is still not perfect. However, the system proved itself to be one of the most effective and beneficial for people. Thereafter, the paper will examine the reasons the US healthcare system is considered one of the best in the world and give proof that it does require further governmental and public support. Despite the ACA program can seem to be imperfect and too expensive for taxpayers and, it is the only way for the most vulnerable social classes to receive proper healthcare.

The good medical system exists in every advanced economy and the ACA is a program that provides social insurance in its essential form (Medicare) and serves as the safety platform for the poor (Medicaid). Under all circumstances, it is not correct to ask whether the current healthcare system is sustainable, but rather whether it should be sustained in the future.

To answer the foregoing question, it is important to provide evidence why Medicare in the USA is beneficial and needs further support. Once the program has been issued and started to function, many opponents and followers of the ACA have appeared, as some stated that a single-oriented system that exists in countries like Britain and Canada would be better to stick to. Let us be honest and think whether those countries really have so much more to offer than the USA. Medicare has already an advantage over other programs as the majority of the Eastern European countries, as well as Canada and Australia, have turned to American way of healthcare system implementation, in which the services are being provided through a private sector. The major reason for such a shift was the growing frustration among people concerning what the government tends to promise and actually does in terms of delivering healthcare services. In the countries, where the healthcare system is built on the national insurance principle, people might wait for ages in order to receive certain treatments and surgeries. This leads to higher mortality rates. Furthermore, the other disambiguation/misconception refers to the quality of healthcare services as such. In the United States, medication is more technologically advanced, if compared to that of the rest of the world. Nevertheless, such negative aspects as inadequate care distribution, waiting lines, and limited access to high-tech devices are the results of the actions of politicians and bureaucrats (Goodman 20).

Circumstantially, medical insurance is regarded as a factor that influences the job decisions being made. The fact that private institutions offer their employees better opportunities for insurance and thus better quality of healthcare services being provided is a strong argument in favor of the ACA. In other words, administrators of the public sector should be interested in implementing Obamacare as by so doing they would be able to put the public sector itself in a more favorable position on the state’s labor market.

The majority of hospitals in the Unites States are non-profit institutions. It happened so mainly due to the possibility of getting the non-profit tax status for those organizations, which are known as “community benefit”. This helped the non-profit hospitals to avoid certain taxation types which helped them save approximately $20 billion. Non-profit hospitals might spend, sometimes, even less money on uninsured patients that for-profit hospitals do. This is the main reason why the Obamacare Act is targeting non-profit organizations rather than for-profit and is beneficial.

It is assumed that since 2008 the number of uninsured individuals has dropped from around 15% to approximately 11% of the US population (Obamacare Facts). Currently, the trend seems to be improving further. The enrollment data showed that around 11.7 million US citizens have entered the insurance marketplace and the number is still increasing (Obamacare Facts). Presumably, over 15 million of the US inhabitants have managed to get health insurance due to Obamacare (Obamacare Facts).
Moreover, the ACA includes provisions that are related to preventative services, which are essential for any sector of the state’s economy. The program’s main target is to remove the obstacles on the way to receiving the mentioned services that would improve the policies of cost sharing and provide access to such covered services as, for instance, alcohol-misuse counseling and cervical cancer treatment (Koh and Sebelius 1297).

One might state that Medicare is a burden for the US economy and it requires significant transformation, as it can ‘sink’ the country due to massive tax increases or jeopardize the safety of many patients due to enormous spending cuts (Feyman). Those, who share this opinion believe that Medicare will run out of money by 2030 and can only cover the 86% of costs, which is unacceptable due to the fact that the major function of the program was to cover all the 100% (Feyman). This means that there should be a significant reform in Medicare (Feyman).

The changes in healthcare legislation are inevitable as the whole economy of the country is facing some specific crucial problems, such as the health care costs’ growing and population aging. The Congressional Budget Office has made an estimation that the spending would increase from 5% to 11% by 2065 (Bernstein). The current medical system has started to elaborate the preventative measures that would help to cut the costs even more and allocate the funds smartly. The latter can possibly be achieved through adopting the programs that would concentrate rather on quality than quantity and make the reformation of the payment systems (Bernstein). It has been noted that the ACA has already made a certain progress, which helped Medicare to increase revenues, combat abuse and fraud, reduce costs, increase benefits, and improve the healthcare delivery system as such. The rate reductions have made the program more trustworthy (Bernstein). This means that governmental funding was worth it and gave push to the reformation of the whole healthcare legislation paradigm. Assuming governmental support is continuing to take place, within 75 years Medicare and Medicaid would become a rather small bump in the overall budget costs, while they have much better control records than the private sector (Bernstein).

In conclusion, this is important to mention that Obamacare has provided people in America with an opportunity to have a positive change in healthcare industry. It is definitely beneficially for the residents of the country at first place. Apart from that, the ACA has opened new employment opportunities. The Obamacare Act is designed to promote healthy lifestyle, sanitize the healthcare legislation by reformatting it, support the vulnerable social classes, and by so doing, guarantee people affordable and topnotch health services. Even though the American healthcare system is far from being perfect, it is qualitatively better than that of many other countries. The process of enhancing Medicare and Medicaid should continue as besides of the fact that they have proven to be one of the best healthcare programs in the world, they still have much to offer. The aging population and the budget overspending are not the milestones, which have been created by Obamacare, and the only way to solve the mentioned issues is to provide further governmental support. Some significant actions have been already taken, but there is still much to be done in the area of healthcare.