So because I wanted to find out why the former health care system needed change at all, it would be redundant to talk about those things that worked out well. Yes, believe it or not: Actually not everything was bad. The report (and the summary) mentions a number of facts proving this. Anyway, as opposed to the aspects presented by the global media, heres my list of facts that either surprised me or of which I think that they are not known enough to the broad public:
1. Health insurance is financed through private money (paid directly to the insurance companies or the by employer, who is then likely to take this extra money off from wages) and indirectly in form of taxes. Everyone in a full-time employment contributes to it. I think this is absolutely fine if all persons paying would benefit from this at least theoretically. But this is not the fact, as there are people who pay for social sevices like Medicaid (in case of low-income) and Medicare (for the elderly and disabled)through taxes while they themselves have no health insurance at all.
2. Paying health care services directly when a ceratin disease is not covered or due to being uninsured is extremely expensive, far more than I would have imagined: A serious illness or an accident can for example cost more than $100 000 of hospital charges (things like ambulance NOT included) and it seems to be not much better if you suffer from a chronical disease like diabetes: The average diabetic spent about §13 250 on health care.
So unsurprisingly 5 % of the Americans prefer to do without urgently required medical treatment.
3. Ethnicity determines the quality of health care you perceive. It is proven that especially Hispanic Americans, but also people with African or Asian background, American Indians and Alaskan Natives receive a rather low-grade quality of health care and have less access to is at all.
And yet even Anglo-Americans get only about 55 % of the care they need.
4. Health care as it is covers too many cases of unneccessary surgeries and medication while especially preventive measures are not nearly used as much as they ideally should.
5. The number of 46 million uninsured Americans is far too high. Besides those who just do not want health insurance there is a majority of people and families being too young to be covered by Medicare, not poor enough to profit from Medicaid but also not able afford private health care. So what are these people to do? They do not even have a chance. If I had to choose between health insurance or regular meals for my children, I know what I would pick.
Now that I have found the article published by the Children's Hospital Boston again, I can add number 6 to my list:
6. According a study led by Heather Rosen, M.D., M.P.H in, from 2002 to 2006 uninsured children in the United States were about three times more likely to die from trauma-related injuries than children covered by commercial insurance. Although it is stated that there is not a proven cause and effect relationship, an interdepence of both factors seems to be very likely.
