Malpractice In Healthcare

1a: The two common strategies that health insurance companies in the U.S. apply to maximize their profit is by increasing cost and decreasing coverage. The U.S. maximizes cost by increasing cost of prescription pill and charging for malpractice insurance. U.S. charges ten times more for prescription medication and One-hundred time more for malpractice insurance than other developed countries. (Reid 2010). The U.S is also maximizing profit by decreasing the number of people eligible for coverage through a “patchwork” system. For instance, those with preexisting conditions will be refused coverage since they’re already ill. Another method is through the “medical loss ratio” and it refers to the loss that insurance companies will face when treating
The ACA has expanded coverage to approximately 20 million people by not cherry picking e.g. pre-existing conditions, making it an individual mandate, and by providing government subsidies (Lo 2017). These changes have affected the insurance companies since they are now covering 20 million people that they didn’t have previous and they no longer deny patients based of preexisting conditions (Reid 2010). In all, more people insured the more the insurance companies can profit from, but this will be a process. 1c. If the ACA had been passed before Sheila's diagnosis she would have received the care she needed early since the ACA covers pre-existing conditions and will less wait time. With ACA, she would have continued her chemotherapy and perhaps attend to the tumors instantly rather being able to remove them after they had spread. Women who are diagnosed, but uninsured are twice as likely to die of breast cancer (Vo 2012). Sheila was part of this statistic once her husband lost his job. In this situation Shelia’s could have utilized the ACA in helping her get the treatments needed if it was passed before her diagnosis. 2a: Our employment based health insurance system is not in line with the policy recommendation that was discussed in the article. The two-policy recommendation that Phelan and his colleagues (2010) is to reduce resource inequality and have interventions towards dealing with contextual risk factors. It’s difficult to reduce resource inequality when there is already a misconception of how much resources are being distributed amongst different classes. The top 20% has access to over 80% of resources, but American believe that number is just below 60% (Lo 2017). Annual income matters in what kind of resources one has access to and that cannot be altered without resistance from the government officials and the top earners in the U.S., therefore