Subsidy for Rural Doctors? Research Paper Example

I am concerned that despite attempts to make healthcare more affordable and accessible through healthcare reform, many individuals across the country have found that it is difficult to access the care awarded to them by the Affordable Care Act. Furthermore, many families who prefer to keep their own insurance have found that their premiums are now too high and they will be forced away from this option.

While affordable or free healthcare is necessary for the many individuals that are not provided care as an employee benefit or those who cannot purchase their own insurance plans, the current system makes it difficult for insurance plans outside of the government plan to exist. This is detrimental to businesses across the country and prevents many Americans from being able to choose their health insurance provider.

To overcome these difficulties, it is necessary to amend the healthcare reform bill to provide guidelines that private health insurance agencies must follow. Although business owners will protest, this regulation will ensure that the business decisions made by these agencies will keep them in business, enable them to earn a profit, and continue to exist as a healthcare option for many Americans. Specifically, the price of insurance plans should be required to remain at the premiums that existed before the Affordable Care Act, with adjustments for inflation. This will ensure that families and businesses are still able to provide private health insurance, which will in turn take some pressure off of the federal government when it comes to funding public health insurance.

While healthcare reform certainly has benefits for individuals who did not have insurance before the Affordable Care Act, it is essential to the country’s economy to ensure that private health insurance remains an option.

First Student Response

While I believe that building psychiatric hospitals in areas with a large prevalence of mental health would be useful, another solution to this problem could be to simply increase hospital staffing and restructuring of the hospital. The primary reason I believe this would be more effective is because it expensive to build a new healthcare institution and more economically feasible to restructure existing ones. Therefore, the existing hospitals should focus on where it is wasting resources. For example it is possible that the pediatric ward is never filled to capacity. The mental health center could be moved to a location where there are more beds and the pediatric center relocated to an area that better suits its lesser needs. Additional staffing could also help with the high capacity in the mental health ward because it will ensure that patients’ needs are being met, which could lead to them being discharged more quickly (Needleman et al., 2002).

Second Student Response

I agree that the lack of healthcare accessibility in rural populations is a major problem. However, it makes sense that a low number of physicians practice in these areas because there is less people. As a consequence, I think that transportation to healthcare facilities should be subsidized for these individuals. This is particularly useful to the elderly populations who may not travel to the doctor regularly due to the expense. Another solution would be to provide government subsidies to doctors for opening offices in rural areas (The Milwaukee Journal, 1949). This would provide incentive because doctors would no longer need to worry about making less money.

References

Needleman J, Buerhaus B, Mattke S, Stewart M, Zelevinsky K. (2002). Nurse-Staffing Levels and the Quality of Care in Hospitals. The New England Journal of Medicine, 346:1715-1722.

The Milwaukee Journal. (1949). Subsidy for Rural Doctors? Retrieved from http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19490205&id=aFQaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IyQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1570,2125872