“Health is wealth”, a person can not work if he or she is physically and mentally sick (ibid). What man possesses a fortune but do not have good health? Based on World Health Assembly, 1948 define health as the “state of complete physical, mental, social well- and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. ” And this meaning is often supplemented by World Health Organization (WHO) in 1986 stated that health is “a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living http://www.wikipedia.
The_American_Heritage_Dictionary). Health care system is one of the main arguments of today’s United States’ economic part. It is provided by different entities the government and the private institutions. According to Kirby on the readings of Malcolm Gladwell, (year) “The Moral Hazard Myth” anchoring on the theory of moral hazard which focus on the changes we make in our behavior when we have our insurance are nearly always wasteful.
On his explanation people who have private health insurances are overusing while there are others who do not have or simply have the Medicaid could hardly use it due to its limited coverage or simply the people could hardly access it due to financial incapability. Plenty of health insurances flock in the markets for people who can afford to, the more expensive the more it has large arrays of health services and access. But these are only good to the population who can buy such health care insurance. But how about the population below the federal poverty level?
Based on the study by Commonwealth Fund published in Health Affairs there are estimated 16 million U. S adults were underinsured in 2003. It is further define that underinsurance population is characterized by at least the following conditions: annual out-of-pocket medical expenses totaling 10% or more of income, or 5 percent or more among adults with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level; or health plan deductibles equaling or exceeding 5% of income. In 2007 15. 3% of the population, or 45. 7 million people without health insurance coverage (http://en. wikipedia. org./wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States).
According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and others, the U. S. is the only wealthy and industrialized nation that does not have universal health care. It is in this view that I agree with socialize health care system in our country. According to President Bush on 2004 President’s report “health saving account” all aim at empowering people to make decisions for themselves, owning their own health-care plan, and at the same time bringing some demand control into the cost of health care” (Gladwell).
This is refuted by Gladwell that health saving account are not a variant of universal health care and the main effect of putting it more of it on the consumer is to reduce the social redistributive element of insurance maybe this is true to some extent that every policies and programs have loopholes, what could this policy do more on the part of the 45. 7 million people in our country who do not have health care plans.