Employer-based insurance has its roots to the world war and can be accrued to the taxation system at the time. It so happened that in 1940 or thereabout, the workers in the USA threatened to go on mass strikes to end the control over their wages. The Labor board then introduced a law that exempted employer benefits from any form of taxation. The laws created a tax advantage that led to workers demand of the employer-based health insurance because it was free from tax. The federal government tried to reform the system, but all labor bodies at the time advocated employer-based health insurance system. By 1960, the model had become universal, and a substantial part of employers were using it. Medical insurance cover in the USA that is provided by the government can be traced to 1966. The government provided medical care for people who were 65-years-old, in a plan that included a comprehensive cover. In the same year, younger persons with disabilities were afforded some insurance by the government. The rationale behind the elderly getting insurance is that they were presumed to have worked into the system. Additionally, they spent a higher amount of finances in health because of the possibilities of many illnesses'.
Several ethical issues were attributed to the healthcare system of the USA. Ironically, among the world's most established democracies, the United States of America still has a free market health care system in which the market dynamics dictate the healthcare systems. Physicians mainly work as free agents, offering their services to patients who are the consumers in this case. Most of these patients would always try to cover themselves from the potentially higher costs of severe illness by purchasing private insurance policies. They as well put effort to minimize their expenditure from the compensation that they receive from their employers. Also caught in the compound of this free market system is a government-funded project called the safety. The safety net was intended to compliment basic health care services to those citizens who could not afford to cater for their healthcare bills. Several million Americans, most of whom are employed citizens and members of their families have no health insurance schemes to cushion them in the healthcare sector.
Contrarily, they are believed to earn enough wages that might disqualify them from benefiting from the public funded safety net. As financial constraints mount at the local and national government levels, the government-funded safety net for the citizens is rapidly picking pace and it is believed that millions of poor citizens are getting caught in the loopholes that have characterized the system. Such hiccups that have dogged this sector have not only raised the public outcry but have also questioned the government and the private healthcare givers' consideration of the ethical issues raised by the health insurance schemes.David Goldhill, in his article How American Health Care Killed My Father, 2009, has radical views and suggestions on how to fix the problems that have dogged the healthcare industry. In his observations, he suggested that rather than expanding the roles of the current insurance schemes in offering health cover to Americans. They should, in fact, be streamlined. He argues that the government should only focus more on offering protection to the less fortunate and other measures that the government can do like natural catastrophes. It is my belief that Goldhill, having seen his father become a casualty of a messed system of healthcare, had indeed contemplated a more practical way of addressing the underlying issues in this sector. His views would, therefore. Be more ethical in solving this problem.
Work Cited.
America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009: Report of the Committee on Energy and Commerce on H.r. 3200 Together with Dissenting Views. Washington: U.S. G.P.O, 2009. Print.
Andre Claire, Velasquez Manuel, Ethics and the Healthcare System. Retrieved on 9thDecember 2014, from: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n3/system.html
David Goldhill, How American Health Care Killed My Father, 2009. Retrieved on 9th December 2014, from: (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/
Shi, Leiyu, and Douglas A. Singh. Delivering Health Care in America: A Systems Approach. Sudbury, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2012. Internet resource.
