Nursing: Health People 2020
Objective: Improving health of Americans
I choose this objective because when an evaluation of Americans health is undertaken there needs to be improvement regarding accessible healthcare. The situation affecting health care in America is that while it is available it is not accessible. Adequate health insurance coverage is one of the greatest hindrances to quality health care. 60% of the nation is uninsured. It is my opinion that even when all Americans become insured there will still be low quality of health care for the majority.
Since healthcare is based on a capitalistic model the objective is to increase surplus and not quality of care. The systems combining accountable care principles into strategic interventions puts recipients of care at odds with the system since some of them are designed to benefit physicians. Therefore, two internal factors affecting access to health care are financing and payment displacements. Without adequate health insurance people die, much more when they do not have any at all. Medicare and Medicaid offer limited coverage and many employer/employee subscriptions plans embody a series of pre-approved and pre-certification dilemmas in accessing quality health care in America. In situations when there is no coverage patients are asked to either pay out of pocket or co-payments are exhaustive.
In 2004 the Institute of Medicine reported that United States of America was among few industrialized nations in the world, which cannot guarantee access to health care for its population (Institute of Medicine, 2004). Physically, there are available health care services, but access barriers to those services have been created through financial impositions. Importantly, analysts have advanced that America’s health care system is the most expensive among developed nations in the world (DeNavas-Walt, 2011).
References
DeNavas-Walt, C. Proctor, B., & Smith, C. (2011). Income, poverty, and health insurance
coverage in the United States: 2010. U.S. Census Bureau: Current Population Reports,
P60-239. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
