The Peanut Gallery
on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs:
Congress’ fierce debate regarding healthcare attempts to address issues we all hate: plummeting efficiency, high patient-doctor ratios, and mismanaged funds. Patient congestion has reached nauseating highs, resulting in long lines and a resource drought. While delegates on both sides of the aisle want a system that works, partisan differences are hot and heavy in the debate.
Liberals are likely to point fingers at insufficient funding as the cause of resource shortage and limited accessibility, arguing that public health clinics can only successfully serve the public when it obtains sufficient doctors and money.
Conservatives see the healthcare system is dysfunctional. Rather than pouring money into a system that is fundamentally broken, they are likely to question public healthcare as the correct vehicle for offering regular care.
Those who are concerned with the way we spend our national funds observe that the system flounders on a daily basis to provide the most basic service to all citizens, instead forced to prioritize newborns, pregnant women, and the eldery.
This problem is compounded by the system’s increasing incapability to respond to a global pandemic, such as the recent H1N1 virus.
These differences became clear in the controversy surrounding the Affordable Healthcare for America Act. This healthcare bill proposed a massive expansion of the Medicaid system insuring 96% of all Americans, but without an specified intent to improve the efficient use of resources to take care of the influx of newly covered patients. Delegates will need to consider the best way to allocate funds when considering the current healthcare bill now before Congress, which proposes a basic insurance plan covering more Americans. With the current healthcare spending burden reaching $2.5 trillion, or 17.6% of the GDP, the need for reorganization, not necessarily additional funds, is very clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment