The author took his sources from two major libraries such as EBSCO Host and Questia On-line Media. The literatures that were chosen span from late 1990s until the late part of 2000s in order to ensure the timeliness and accuracy of the data gathered. Upon reading the said literatures, the researcher found out that there are three major health insurances that the citizens have; these are Medicaid, Medicare and HMO. The uninsured individuals are classified for the purpose of this policy analysis as the ones who are not within the coverage of these three.
However, despite all of these insurances, a number of analysts perceived that the country has been experiencing a health-care crisis. Several factors such as rising costs, increase of unemployment, insufficient funding from the government, and an increasing number of young populations that require a specialized amount of care all affect on how the country’s health care system will function and be able to sustain it self (Jost, 2002, p. 535).
It has been perceived that the costs for health care will continue to rise; more specifically, premiums are projected to increase by 50% over the next five years. In relation with this, if the economy will continue to be sluggish, companies will be forced to lessen the number of their employees who could be insured. In addition with this, more than half of all the employees will be required to pay more than they used to for insurance. Closely related to this, is the possibility of cutting a significant number of jobs due to the continuous increase of health-care premiums.
In relation to the perceived financial challenges that the economy and the insurance industry might face, the further difficulty of catering the needs of the uninsured creates further dilemma for the government. Tunzi (2004) has emphasized the case of the sluggish economy and the budget deficits that significantly affects the disposition of the uninsured. According to the statistics, the uninsured comprises of 23 million male, 20 million female, in which 21 million are white, 13 million are Hispanic, 7 million are black, and 2 million are Asian or Pacific Islander (p.
1357). The major implication of being an uninsured is primarily characterized by worse cases of illnesses because of the failure to regularly check with the doctor, or failure to seek care until the illness is already terminal. In relation with this, Tunzi also emphasized that majority of the uninsured are children and most likely they are more prone to poorer health or may die prematurely. Hence, according to Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 2002 report (as cited in Tunzi, 2004, p.
1358) that the lives of children will be made longer and their long term development would be significantly improved if they are covered with insurance. To solve this problem, the IOM has ensured a Broadbased Health Insurance Strategy which caters to preventive services, outpatient prescription drugs, and specialized mental health care, in addition to general ambulatory and hospital medical care (p. 1359). In addition, the Bush Administration has also launched the expansion of the Community Center System; however, the author perceived that such a program is not sufficient enough due to certain limitations that it posed.