Health Care Utilization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Health Care Utilization - Essay Example Health is a basic necessity and must be provided equally to those who need it regardless of race, locality, gender, or social status in life. Health care has become effective in treating diseases and disorders, in saving lives, and in improving the quality of life; however, the cost of health care has also become expensive for Americans. President Barack Obama believes on the provision of accessible and quality health care to all Americans; thus, on March 23, 2010, he made the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into a law (Jacobs & Skocpol, 2012, 1). The ideal nature of the health care reform under the Obama administration is the center of debate as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was viewed as expansive, ambitious, and unconstitutional. The best way to gauge the effectiveness of the current health care reform is to compare it with the previous legislations and provisions. To determine the different ways on how have recent health care reform measures expanded or inhibited access to care, we will discuss thoroughly the revolution of health care in the United States. First, previous health care is based on an insurance model as old as the Hammurabi’s code. There is a basic insurance policy where premiums from policyholders are pooled (Jacobs & Skocpol, 2012, 3). When somebody gets sick, the cost of the medical care will be paid from the pool. Therefore, this model inhibited access to care because majority of the benefits goes through the sickest patients while the healthiest members got the least. Second, the Bureau of Veterans Affairs worked on expanding a fully nationalized health care because of increasing number of commercial insurance companies (Parks, 2012, 3). The bill works by getting reimbursements from public and private insurers with charges and co-pays that don’t apply to all veterans. There are coverage limitations, however, health care has been expanded to a number of veterans, administrators,