The current US healthcare financing system is briefly outlined in the following paragraphs.
Medicare was an attempt to ensure that adequate medical care would be available to the aged and some chronically ill persons and that the price of such services would not be so prohibitive that persons would have no basic care. Medicare is federally funded and is financed by a tax on wages. Every citizen who is currently working provides a portion of his or her salary to the budget of the Medicare program. Employers and employees contribute and equal percentage of wages to fund Medicare. Medicare provides more than 30% of total income to hospitals and 21% of all income to physicians (Maurer, 2000).
Medicaid is a grant program designed to provide medical assistance to the poor and is funded by both federal and state governments. The individual states administer the program. The federal government pays about 50% of the Medicaid budget, but the specific allotment for each state varies from 50% to 78%, depending on the state's per capita income and the percentage of Medicaid recipients in the state population. Poorer states receive a greater share from the federal government. Medicaid is financed by income tax revenues at the federal level and by general tax revenues at the state level, with some contributions from local municipalities (Maurer, 2000).
The other form of health care insurance is employer provided and privately purchased. The government does not pay toward any of these premiums. .
Government involvement in health care has gradually increased, but so have costs, to the point that concern is being expressed about the limitations of our resources in continuing to provide for everyone's health care needs (Tappen, 2001). This is why I believe that health care insurance should be a right. If the government controlled insurance and everyone had insurance, cost could be controlled, emergency rooms wouldn't supplement doctor's visits, and preventive care could eliminate long-term problems.
