United States National Healthcare System

United States National Healthcare System

My Opinion

        Approximately 5 years ago the US Congress approved legislation to enact a nationalized health care system.  This health care system was put in place to provide low cost health care for everyone in America.  I feel that the congress under took legislation that while it had a great intent we as tax payers could not support.  I also feel that congress provided the citizens with inaccurate information regarding the costs of health care.

Research

In the Washington Post article titled Once again, U.S. has most expensive, least effective health care system in survey the author Lenny Bernstein posits that the US Healthcare system is still in trouble and has a long way to go to be fixed.  In a 2014 report “the United States [is] dead last in the quality of its health-care system when compared with 10 other western, industrialized nations.” (Bernstein) The article compares data collected from 2004 through 2014, the same time period in which congress enacted the Affordable Care Act.  Bernstein concluded the article stating “Davis said that while the government can set standards, provide incentives and exact penalties for poor performance, professional organizations that represent various parts of the medical system must get behind the effort to force changes, and many have.”

Is the information contained in the articles reliable? Yes

Are the authors credible or non-credible? Yes, Lenny has covered health and medicine at the Washington Post.  In addition in his article the data he has provided is backed by numerous Doctors and research data.

Is the article credible? Yes

        In the article US needs true universal health care, not affordable care act the author Oliver Tonkin’s position is that the US has not gone far enough in its efforts to enact healthcare for all US citizens.  Tonkin stated “The ACA was a contrived compromise that, in theory, addresses the shortfalls of our current healthcare paradigm.” (Tonkin)  He continues with his position that the US spends “$8,000 per person per year, which amounts to an astonishing 18 percent of our GDP.” (Tonkin)  This is the highest dollar amount spent per person over multiple nations in the world.  Having this high spending has not made many changes though.  Tonkin concludes that although there have been some changes the US needs to move to a full single payer Universal Care system which he feels “we can already afford.” (Tonkin)