All Americans Should Have Access to Free Healthcare

All Americans Should Have Access to Free Healthcare

In the United States of America “Health insurance is a means for financing a person’s health care expenses. While the majority of people have private health insurance coverage, primarily through an employer, many others obtain health insurance through programs offered by the government. Other individuals do not have health insurance at all.” (Smith & Medalia, 2014, pp. 1-2) In fact, according to the latest Census report on healthcare coverage in the United States, 42 million American citizens did not have health insurance for the entire year in 2013. This accounts for a staggering 13.4 percent of the country’s population, 13.4 percent of Americans risked facing huge medical bills should the unthinkable happen. These statistics need addressing. (Smith & Medalia, 2014, pp. 1-2)

Research indicates that age plays a key part in whether people are covered by health insurance or not. Those aged between 19 and 64 are less likely to have health insurance than children and the elderly. The predominant contribution to this being that government funded health insurance is more available to these demographics. (Smith & Medalia, 2014, p. 4)

When looking at income-to-poverty ratios, alarmingly, “individuals living below one hundred percent of poverty had the highest uninsured rate, at 24.9 percent, while those living at or above 250 percent of poverty had the lowest uninsured rate, at 7.5 percent”. This shows that income is the largest factor in determining whether American citizens have health insurance. (Smith & Medalia, 2014, p. 9)

The Affordable Care Act has gone some way into decreasing the amount of Americans living without health insurance. One year after it was fully in place the percentage of uninsured Americans has reduced by around 25 percent. However, there is still a worrying number of Americans who do not have health insurance. (Sanger-Katz, 2014)

Findings published by The Commonwealth Fund in 2014 showed that not only is the United States healthcare system the most expensive in the world, it ranked last overall when 11 nations were studied in terms of quality of care, access to care, efficiency, equity and healthy lives. The other nations studied were Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The United States ranked lowest in