Health Policy

The national health policy of the United States needs to be changed.

The current national health policy in the United States leaves much to be desired. A change is needed. Under the current system, quality health care is only available to middle class, upper middle class, and the elite families who can afford reasonable health care coverage. Health care costs in this country continue their decade-old steady rise, leaving poor, low income and lower middle class families to fend for themselves in terms of health care. Sick and dying patients are turned away from hospitals and the treatment they need because of an inability to pay. Treatable and preventable conditions deteriorate into serious problems, because the patients didn't have access to the proper tests. These patients often can't afford expensive, trial-based medical treatments and thus are left to live out the remainder of their days without the proper treatment. Also, insurance companies tend to reject patients with expensive, preexisting conditions, so if by some circumstance the patient is able to afford insurance later in life, the insurance companies based on the prospective cost of treatment reject their applications. It's a lose-lose situation of the uninsured.

The growing disparity in medical treatment is not only limited to socio-economic factors. Different ethnicities often experience a harder time getting and retaining easy access to quality health care. The percentage of the uninsured is statistically higher in different ethnic groups. Women and people with disabilities also suffer from this disparity, experiencing the same hardships in trying to get covered, and trying to stay covered. They are often forced to pay unreasonably high premiums and deductibles, rationalized by vague wording buried deep in the back pages of the policy. Health policy specialists remain appalled at the treatment these groups receive from large insurance companies and the medical profession in general. In their eyes, it's a crime that such a wealthy, industrialized nation, one of the richest and allegedly most prosperous in the world, leaves the poorest of citizens without proper health care. The United States is a leader that other nations look to for guidance and use as an example for moral conduct. It's no wonder than that the status of the United States has dropped significantly in the eyes of the world, as an unfair system that favors the rich is allowed to perpetuate itself and even prosper. The health policy of the United States needs to be dramatically and drastically altered. A free, government sponsored health care system is the only way to ensure that all Americans receive the medical care and treatment that they deserve. This health policy is the only one that makes sense. If the United States wants to repair its reputation on the world stage, a fantastic first step would be to say, look at us we take care of our own. We encourage all nations' to do the same and put the needs and interests of the populace first. Petty squabbling over minute details must take a back seat to the real problem. Today's national health policy is unrealistic, biased, unfair and just plain wrong. It's time for a change.

Summary: The national health policy in America desperately needs to be changed, because only the rich and well off people can currently afford the proper health care.