Policy and Environmental Issues – Financing of the US Healthcare System

Policy and Environmental Issues –Financing of the US Healthcare System
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Policy and Environmental Issues –Financing of the US Healthcare System
Many people agree that the cost of healthcare in the US is exorbitantly high and unnecessarily complex. As Magee (2019) explains, the country’s healthcare ecosystem comprises a blend of public, private, non-profit, and for-profit healthcare institutions and medical insurance providers. The federal government provides healthcare cover through the Medicare program to only particular groups within the population. According to Madden et al. (2021), these groups include veterans, some persons with disability, and adults older than 65 years. In contrast, a large majority of the population finances their healthcare needs through a combination of out-of-pocket insurance payments, healthcare taxes, and government subsidies.
Most of the above provisions are safeguarded in the Affordable Healthcare Act, which came into effect in 2010. The effectiveness of the reforms is most notable in reducing the uninsured rate from 16% to around 8.5% of the population (Madden et al., 2021). Thanks to Medicare, people without access to healthcare insurance have been halved. However, Americans still pay more for healthcare than any other nation in the industrialized world. According to Nekui et al. (2020), the above occurrence is a big problem that points to significant inefficiencies within the s...