Failure of Obama's Healthcare Reform

Introduction

The United States is generally viewed as having the best health care in the world—when best is defined as having the most advanced technology and highly skilled specialists. However, when the United States is compared on basic health status factors against other countries in the world, it comes up deficient. Infant mortality status is a measure of how many children die before their first birthday. On this measure, the United States ranks 42nd in the world behind countries such as Cuba, Portugal, Finland, the Czech Republic and many others (Central Intelligence Agency, 2008). When measured on the average life span of its citizens, the United States was reported in 2006 at 78.0 years, the same as Cuba and Chile and behind countries such as Switzerland (82), Spain (81), Sweden (81), Canada (81), Singapore (80), and the United Kingdom (79). 1 These data suggest that the U.S. population, while enjoying access to the most highly sophisticated medical services available, is not as healthy as other developed and underdeveloped countries.

The preceeding aspects represent the problem of leadership in health. The existing structure of health care is incapable of fulfiling the needs and demand of the community. Basic health indicators suggest that the “low-hanging fruit” of population health improvement is in the expansion of primary care services. However, these services have the least financial support in U.S. reimbursement mechanisms, whereas in other countries, primary and preventive care has historically been a hallmark of health care system design. The challenge for leadership presented by these data is one of restructuring medical delivery with a balanced focus on primary care and access without diminishing the specialized services that are the pride of U.S. communities and providers. (www.aflcio.org).

Thesis

To evaluate the effectiveness of Obama's Healthcare reform

Problem: Failure of Obama's Healthcare Reform

At times smart moves and good ideas can lead to disaster, same happened to Obama's plan to reform health care system in United States. As a president, he had the opportunity to rebuilt the current structure of healthcare: Democrat, Republican, and Independent.Healthcare reform was probably the one and only bipartisan issue, and President Obama managed to ruin it for everyone. The first mistake was forcing the American people to obtain healthcare or face penalties.Forcing Americans to obtain healthcare under threat of monetary sanctions is just plain pointless and only serves to aggravate the opposite party. Trying to take money away from already cash-strapped Americans is a great way to make friends (Balint, pp 12-46).

Moreover, the regulations and laws for the health care is quite un unwieldy and complex. Although privatized system is the way to go as a fully National Healthcare System; does not work that well and is very expensive. Healthcare reform should have been as simple as the following: (1) No more pre-existing conditions clause, (2) Insurance companies cannot deny claims for peer-reviewed experimental treatments, (3) No more lifetime caps and price gauging, (4) The laws go into effect immediately. Who needs the complex and just stupid healthcare exchanges? if the ...