Government-Run Insurance: Streamlining Health for Citizens - Essay Sample

Introduction

Health is one of the social sectors that any government or legally constituted authority should strive to streamline to reflect the changing demands among its citizens. This being the case an Insurance plan that is centrally run becomes a basic requirement, provided that resources are well managed and there are no complicated and tiresome bureaucratic procedures as far as processing of claims is concerned.

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Before delving deeper into the dynamics of government managed insurance policies, we need to familiarize with the National Health Insurance Act and also the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in a bid to draw the distinction between the two in terms of similarities and differences. The Affordable Health Care Act that was implemented in 2010 is another name for "Obamacare". It presented a major leap towards universal health coverage. It among other things allowed young adults to be regarded as dependents of their parents' health insurance claims up to the age of 26. This shows an avalanche of positive effects as numbers covered in the private insurance programs soared. Also, the increase in coverage was realized across races and both working and non-working groups (Sommers, Buchmueller, Decker, Carey, & Kronick, 2013).

Apart from the Affordable Health Care Act which broadened the insurance coverage, there are other insurance programs that have equally impacted the US health sector towards positive gains. For instance, there is the Medicare plan which is meant for the aging populations and Medicaid for individuals described as having marginal incomes. Our discussion, therefore, follows on how the former compares with the latter (Medicare and Medicaid). As the Affordable Health Care seeks to increase the number of US citizens under the insurance program, Medicare and Medicaid are applicable to various segments of the society (Gross & Notowidigdo, 2011).

Programs like Medicare are conceptualized as subsidies by the federal government of the US while the Affordable Care Act is a pure health insurance plan which allows individuals buy insurance policies from private companies subject to reforms in various states. That means while Medicare is provided by the government, the Affordable Health Care Act provides for a structured framework whereby can purchase insurance from private companies or can be directly covered by their employers (Gross & Notowidigdo, 2011). Unlike ACA which covers children and young adults of up to 26 years, Medicare covers the elderly people who are at least 65 years of age and one of the spouses paid the payroll taxes otherwise known as the Medicare taxes for at least 10 years. You can as well be a Medicare beneficiary if you are disabled and you are yet to hit 65 years. However, before you start enjoying, one must have been receiving the social security benefits for disabled for at least 2 years.

In case you are 65 and you didn't pay the required payroll taxes you can still qualify for the Medicare program but this time you will have to pay relatively higher premiums. Perhaps, the similarity between the two insurance arrangements is that there is the involvement of government at some level in terms of providing the requisite legal framework. While Medicare is guided by laws made as early as 1965, the Affordable Care Act is guided by legal provisions introduced during the Obama regime. Both underscore the regulative authority presence.

References

Gross, T., & Notowidigdo, M. J. (2011). Health insurance and the consumer bankruptcy decision: Evidence from expansions of Medicaid. Journal of Public Economics, 95(7-8), 767-778. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.01.012

Sommers, B. D., Buchmueller, T., Decker, S. L., Carey, C., & Kronick, R. (2013). The Affordable Care Act Has Led To Significant Gains In Health Insurance And Access To Care For Young Adults. Health Affairs, 32(1), 165-174. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2012.0552