Essay Sample: Foundational Pros and Cons of Healthcare Reform in The United States

The healthcare landscape is experiencing drastic changes with time, leaving many people with very little knowledge about the healthcare system's new reforms. These reforms involve the creation or repealing of policies, regulations, or laws in the current rules. It also consists in changing the structures of rules and laws that are existing. In the United States, healthcare reforms involve the issue of a free market system of medical care (Blumberg & Holahan, 2019). These reforms have their advantages and disadvantages, as discussed in this paper.

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One of the pros of these reforms is that they eliminate surprise billing (Blumberg & Holahan, 2019). Surprise billing results from patients getting services from hospitals not registered with their insurance companies resulting in out-of-network bills that are usually huge. These problems mostly occur during emergency cases when the patients do not have enough time to determine who the hospital's insurance provider is. In other cases, the patient may assume that the providers on-site working in a hospital, for example, radiologists have the same insurer with the hospital they are working in. However, this may not be the case. Healthcare reforms would end these surprise billings by eliminating insurance provider networks and bringing prohibitions on balance billing that is Medicare-like (Blumberg & Holahan, 2019).

Another advantage of these health reforms is that they lead to increased access to health care. Most of the necessary medical benefits will be covered by insurance (Amadeo & Boyle, 2020. This will save those who have serious health problems from a disproportionate financial burden after getting healthcare services. People with low income will seek health care anytime they are in need without any struggle. Increased and improved access to healthcare services results in improved health standards. As a result, they enhance higher living standards and low mortality rates since people with good health are highly productive and have a higher life expectancy.

These reforms also have their cons, one of the cons is that there will be a shortage of supply on healthcare providers after the increased number of people seeking healthcare services (Amadeo & Boyle, 2020). The facilities at the hospitals will not be able to cover all the patients with ease. To handle this problem, the government will need to employ more physicians and other professional healthcare providers to take high demand. New healthcare personnel employment and adding new facilities in hospitals will cost the government more money. The government will transfer This financial burden to the citizens of the United States through higher taxation rates.

Another con of health care reforms is that the consumers will not be choosing their insurers, and competition benefits will be eliminated (Blumberg & Holahan, 2019). Prohibiting having a private insurer as an alternative will be unfair to dissatisfied customers because they will not choose a new insurer. Having one insurance plan for the entire population would eliminate the completion benefits like high-quality services, promotions, differences in cost, and incentives. Providers would lack encouragement to be more efficient (Blumberg & Holahan, 2019). This will, in turn, pressure the government to meet the needs of consumers, which may be challenging. Prohibiting private insurers as options for consumers will crumble insurance companies that have majorly invested in health insurance leaving many people unemployed. Unemployment is a negative factor in the country's economy, and the living standards of those who will lose their employment will lower.

References

Amadeo, K., & Boyle, M. J. (2020). Obamacare Pros and Cons Is Obamacare Worth It? The balance. https://www.thebalance.com/obamacare-pros-and-cons-3306059

Blumberg, L. J., & Holahan, J. (2019). The Pros and Cons of Single-Payer Health Plans. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99918/pros_and_cons_of_a_single-payer_plan.pdf