Health insurance includes a range of methods for guaranteeing healthcare services at no or reduced costs and these include government provided programs and individually purchased programs or products. The original health insurance concept was designed to spread the risk of incurring large claims across a broad population (some of which will actually have no claims at all in a given calendar year). In the United States, a complex system of contracts, specialized terms, selection of risk (selecting individuals who have fewer claims) and regulations at both the state and federal levels have sprouted from the original concept.
Healthcare coverage is a very controversial topic especially in the United States. Many attempts have been made beginning in the twentieth century to provide a universal healthcare coverage to all those Americans who were not insured but most of them ended up in failure due to the influence of some groups, like doctors, who saw it as a way of curtailing their freedom to practice in the service of their patients. Many of the early efforts to provide discounted healthcare were pressured out of existence by physician groups but the rising cost of healthcare has made it a mandatory issue to be considered and discussed within the political circles. Healthcare coverage has become a very important matter within the United States because of the increasing costs which prevents many of those Americans in great need of the said medical care from getting it. This is mostly due to the fact that they can barely afford to pay the premiums demanded by insurance companies, or if they are able to, they can only afford insurance with little coverage. Attempts have been made by the federal government to ensure that healthcare coverage is available for all Americans by requiring all employers to provide health insurance for their workers while the government covers those who are not employed.
This proposition has however been opposed by some sectors of the economy, most notably, small businesses. These small businesses balk at the cost of providing insurance for more employees because, they argue, the government does not provide enough resources to enable them to bear these costs. The proposition that businesses expand coverage for their employees would force these businesses to cut wages, lay off workers, and perhaps even cease operations because of the high cost of insurance. The government could choose to bear the cost of all health care, as is done in Canada, because it can control the cost of health care to a greater degree than it does in the current system. This proposition has been opposed by many organizations which argue that this move would make access to health care more unequal because the rich and influential in society would just be able to skip the line and get preferential treatment as opposed to those who were there first. Moreover, this system would discourage further research into the development of new pharmaceuticals and medical devices which are an essential part of the improvement of medical services.
In conclusion, I propose that the best way to deal with this issue is to first implement the universal healthcare coverage and then deal with the problems that arise from it as they come because there is no perfect system in the world.
