Health Care Essay

The development of the health care legislation in the US affected consistently not only the health care system but also social and economic development of the US because the growing trend to the wider public funding of the health care system led to the misbalancing of the health care system, which used to be grounded on the private health care solely. In this respect, the recent legislative initiatives and the health care reform launched by Barak Obama is the challenge to the traditional health care system of the US, which marks the shift from the private health care to the public one due to legislative changes being introduced in terms of the aforementioned reform.
On analyzing the development of the national health care in the US, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that the national legislation and health care system developed I the context of the ongoing contradiction between the public health care and private health care. Initially, the national health care system was based on private health care system. Many Americans had health insurance, which covered their health care costs. However, the health insurance did not enroll all Americans and failed to regulate and control the provision of health care services of the high quality to Americans, including insured ones.
In such a situation, legislators introduced the Public Health Service Act of 1944, which established state agencies regulating and controlling health care services being delivered to Americans. The main purpose of the Public Health Service Act of 1944 was to provide Americans with health care services of the high quality and to maintain control over organizations and companies related to health care industry in terms of quality of products and services delivered to consumers. The emergence of state agencies regulating and controlling functioning of health care organizations, work of health care professionals, and quality of products and services delivered to patients contributed to the improvement of the quality of health care services.
However, state agencies failed to make health care services more available to average Americans. As the matter of fact, the wide gap between the upper- and middle-class, on the one hand, and lower-class, on the other, persisted. The problem was that a considerable part of the US population could not afford health care insurance that prevented them from receiving health care services of the high quality. Therefore, health care services became unavailable to a large part of the US population.
In response to this challenge, the government has developed Medicaid and Medicare programs, which aimed at that assistance to the least protected layers of the US population. Medicare focused on uninsured retired Americans, who could not afford health care services and health insurance. Medicaid was destined to provide health care services to low-income families, who could not afford covering their health care costs and health insurance (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2007). These programs allowed many Americans to enjoy health care services, even without health insurance, although the quality of such health care services was still lower compared to private health care services. In fact, this was the first step toward the shift to the public health care instead of the private health care.
By the late 20th century – early 21st century, the shift from the private health care to public health care became obvious. In order to enhance the quality of health care services, the US legislators introduced the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (Scott, 2001), which regulated electronic health care transactions and established national standards in regard to national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. United States National Health Care Act of 2009 creates a universal single-payer health care system in the US, when the state covers costs of health care services using public funds. The United States National Health Care Act of 2009 contributed to the increase of the role of the state in provision of health care services and marked the shift from the private to public health care.
Furthermore, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 enhances Medicare and expands coverage to enroll more uninsured Americans (Miller, 2000). In such a way, the national health care system becomes more and more public because the private health care cannot deliver health care services to all Americans. In such a context, it is important to understand that health care services are not mere commodities. They are vitally important for all Americans and the government stands on the ground is the right but not the commodity. Therefore, health care services should be available to all Americans.
As a result, the recent legislative changes contributed to consistent changes in the national health care system and its irrevocable shift toward the public health care. In such a situation, the government took responsibility to provide all Americans with health care services and the state support is crucial because the skyrocketing health care costs make them unavailable to a large part of the US population. In such a situation, legislative changes are backed up by state agencies which control national health care standards and quality of health care services delivered to Americans.