THE EFFECT OF NURSING SHORTAGE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM By the year 2014, America will be undergoing through one of its historical moments, the provision of health coverage to the nation’s 46 million uninsured people. The aim of the health care reform is to improve access to quality care for all Americans. This implies more Americans will require Healthcare services.” Nurses are the largest group of U.S professionals and constitute a major part of the infrastructure necessary to any health care reform agenda “(1). Unfortunately there is shortage of Nurses to meet the demands of the health care reform. HRSA projects that, absent aggressive intervention, in the year 2020 the shortage will grow to more than 1 million RNs-representing a shortage of 36% (2).
It helps to meet both quality and cost effective measures by patients. (Leatherman, 2013) United health care effectively communicates the performance results and feedback to the customers that provides the detailed process of decision making abilities. United Health care provides the important guidelines of preventing health issues at an initial stage which is important in healthy life style. It helps to make the patients healthy. United health group is committed to offer a wide range of health insurance plans and other benefits.
The rising number of individuals without health insurance has been one of the most pressing issues at the state and federal level for many years. The U.S. has an estimated 50.2 million citizens without insurance coverage and the highest healthcare costs relative to the size of the economy in the world (The White House, 2011). With the 2008 election, presidential candidate Barack Obama focused on the need for American health care reform. President Obama assumed office in January 2009 and wasted no time urging Congress to pass his health reform proposal, the Affordable Care Act. The proposed Affordable Care Act was expected to provide health security for all Americans by reforming health insurance policies.
Economists estimate about 2 trillion will be spent on medical care in 2007. That is about $6,830 per person, which amounts to 16 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Clemmitt, Marcia (2006, April 7) Rising health cost (vol.16, Issue 13). Recent reports from (Clemmit,2006) recognize the fact that rising health care costs have made health insurance too expensive for many employers to offer and health care itself too costly for tens of millions of Americans.
Approximately fifty patients required a dose of almost one hundred pounds of this drug, this demand could only be fulfilled over a period of one year with the current manufacturing infrastructure available at Merck. Merck Inc. also posed bottlenecks during the drug development process in form of corporate pressure from the government and AIDS activists. Since Crixivan was one of the most efficient and safe drug in the list of anti-HIV drugs, an emotional pressure from the public health officials and AIDS activists began to mount barriers in the Drug development process of Crixivan. There were multiple aspects that Merck Inc. had to look into before entering the production of the drug. As a precautionary measure Merck had learnt from the bad experience between the AIDS activists and Burroughs Wellcome’s anti-HIV drug AZT pricing and distribution.
To achieve the goal of achieving healthy American people by the year 2020, Healthy People 2020 have formulated a step in gradually bringing about change in the health status of the community by Mobilizing partners, assessing the needs of the community, creating and implementing a plan to reach the goal set and tracking the plan’s progress along the process (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2012). So as we the nurses, we can help to reach these goals by providing education to people. Education is such a big deal in nursing. It’s empowering. We need to ensure health care providers are educated.
It is the only industrialize nation that does not provide health coverage to all of its citizens. There is widespread opposition to providing universal health care because of the substantial cost that will be added to the country’s budget that is already heavily burdened. Indeed, while this is a valid and understandable concern, every citizen in the United States has the right to quality health care coverage. The cost of health care has been on a steady rise for the past several years. According to The Kaiser Family Foundation, the average cost of family insurance coverage in the United States was $13,000.00 per year in 2009.
There is a great deal of controversy over the availability of health care in the United States. The year 2008 is a presidential-election year, and nearly every candidate for the presidency also has a platform that includes health care reform. The fact that, “The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not provide universal access to health care and that the United States has the most expensive health care system of any industrialized nation” (Marshner) should be a wake up call to every citizens. However, The United States government guarantees our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Constitution. The right to life is as fundamental as it gets.
The New Health Care System in America The United States is considered one of the most powerful nations in the World. It has some of the best technology, research, and business systems among the advanced nations around the globe. However, the truth is that our country is well behind other advanced nations in providing health care in an efficient, timely, and cost effective manner (New York Times, 2007). It is extremely disappointing to see that such a great nation has about 47 million people that are uninsured and do not have access to health care (Institute of Medicine, 2010). Many Americans have fooled themselves into thinking that we in fact have the best health care system in the world.
It boasts of the best hospitals, research institutions and competent and highly skilled personnel in the world, yet it is among the countries that perform poorly amongst industrialized nations in terms of long-term care. Its healthcare system is inefficient, bureaucratic, and divided. This has been contributed by misconceptions across the American population concerning healthcare issues (Malhotra, 2010). Some of these are: U.S. has the best healthcare system globally; healthcare rationing is impossible in America; many migrants are in the United States because of healthcare; immigrants are the cause of rising healthcare costs and socialized medicine is not