The Cost of Health Care: The Impact of Uncompensated Care
The Cost of Health Care - due by Day 7 of Week Two
Choose one of the two topics below:
• Discuss the issue of uncompensated care (the uninsured) in the U.S. and its impact on the health care system, the cost of care, and on health. Discuss the history of the trend, describe the extent of uninsured care, and the current status of this problem. Include in your discussion what you think the role of nursing needs to be in relation to health care of the uninsured.
Write a 2- to 3-page paper on one of the above topics using the following guidelines and evaluation criteria. Use a minimum of five references from the professional nursing literature in the assigned course readings and other references in the Walden Library. If they are relevant, you may use one or two professional web sites in addition to the literature references.
Begin the paper with a brief paragraph that provides an overview of the assignment and its purpose. There is no separate heading for this paragraph; the heading is the same as the title of the paper. This will be about 2-3 sentences. The last sentence in this paragraph is a sentence that begins "The purpose of this paper is to ¨. This paragraph is worth 20 points.
Use the headings below for each option for the rest of the paper.
Option A:
Uncompensated care in the U.S. - 40 points
Discuss the history of the trend, the extent of uninsured care, and the current status of this problem.
Impact of uncompensated care - 40 points
Discuss the impact of caring for the uninsured on the health care system, the cost of care, and on health.
Nursing and care for the uninsured - 40 points
Discuss at least two strategies nursing could use to provide care or influence the provision of care for the uninsured. Describe the reasons why you think these strategies would be effective.
Summary - 10 point
Provide a one-paragraph summary of the main points in the paper.
Format/style
Proofread your paper as described in the tips for success in this course and correct any typos, grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, or APA format errors before submitting your paper in the Dropbox. You can have up to 30 points deducted from your grade for this assignment for these types of errors, or for not using at least the minimum number of required professional literature references..
THE COST OF HEALTH CARE
Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
The Cost of Health Care
Introduction
Considering the fact that several Americans may not be having health insurance, millions of this uninsured population still consumes health care services yearly. The introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has therefore seen the previously uninsured Americans gain insurance through either private plans or Medicaid that are purchased from the health care market place.
It is therefore essential to determine the fact that as people continue to gain health care coverage, the provider’s costs that are associated with caring for the uninsured under elderly populace that are uncompensated declines, since more people are having the capacity to pay for their health care. This primary idea of this study is to determine issues of uncompensated care and the manner in which this impacts health care systems in the U.S.
Uncompensated Care in U.S
The uncompensated care in the U.S. begun in 2013 before the implementation of the health reform coverage provision that was initiated by the state. As a result of this, close to 72 million people were unable to acquire insurance coverage for either full or part of the year (Teresa, John H, Kyle, & Megan, 2014). This resulted in the uninsured population having lower health care expenses on an annual basis than the population that was insured. In viewing the differences, it can be determined that the uninsured population lower rates of health care utilization varies to that of the insured population.
Currently, it is important to consider that the overall spending of health care services is lower with the population without insurance paying as much as those who are insured from their pockets (Teresa, et.al.2014). In other words, the nonelderly populations are likely to spend close to $500 from their own pockets every year while the uninsured spend roughly $476 part-year, and $610 per year.
The Impact of Uncompensated Care
It is essential to consider that uncompensated care may drive the health care providers in incurring costs in providing care to this population that may not be compensated. As a result of this, hospitals are bound to shoulder their own burdens in providing health care to this population by incurring bad debts each and every year (Parmenter, 2015). In the past, health care facilities had the capacity to shift the uncompensated care costs to the insured population in order to cov...