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Health Care Coverage in America
Health insurance is an important benefit for employment relationships for employees. This is because health benefits are important because they relate directly to the health status of the employee. Therefore, health benefits are critical enough to be left to employers. This means that employers should not be the main source of health care coverage in the United States. Instead of the employers being the sole providers of the important insurance plans, the government insurance plans as well as private health care plans. The current situation in the United States health care proves that the health insurance policies should be a collective responsibility of all the stakeholders.
Despite being a collective responsibility, employers hold the best position for the provision of health care insurance. They remain essential due to the fact that the majority of the people currently covered by health care insurance policies are the employed (Stanton, 2004). This means that employers have the capacity to provide health care insurance as part of the benefits of the employees. One of the reasons why employer Employer-based insurance plans are essentially plans is consistency. Employers are consistent in paying for the health plans which establishes a stable health care system in the country (Stanton, 2004). Therefore, to solve the problem of uninsured population, it is important to first keep the employed population insured.
The second main challenge of the health care insurance policies in the country is the large number of the uninsured population. The problem is that the uninsured population grows both in the sections of the population that is employed and those that are unemployed. Focusing on the employed sections of the population, the majority of the uninsured population are the people into wage-earning brackets. According to Kraemer and Harry (2004), over 80 percent of the uninsured population lives in the households that are in the bracket of wage-earning level. This means that the best solution for this section of the population is to require all the employers to provide health care to their employees; whether wage earners or salary earners.
Due to the challenge of the large population of the wage-earning workers remaining uninsured, it is important that private health insurance policies are considered. In the cases where employers to the wage-earning employees do not include health care benefits in their compensation packages, private schemes are necessary (Messerli, 2012). Through private health insurance, the wage-earning employees in this category can pay for health insurance. In addition, the unemployed population in America keeps increasing over the years. The increase in jobless sections of the population creates a need for government-sponsored health care insurance schemes (Burdrys & Gladys, 2001). According to Messerli (2012), such schemes will benefit the population that has no option to get health insurance or even affordable health care. This means that the affordable health care initiative by the government is significantly to the American population.
In general, employers cannot be the main source of health care coverage in the United States. While health insurance benefits are important and helpful to employees, not all employers provide the benefits to their workers. This creates a gap that necessitates the provision of government-based health insurance schemes. At the same time, the number of wage-earners are high and most of them are not insured. This requires the provision or availability of private health insurance schemes that such employees will join to cover their health status. Therefore, employers cannot be the main source of health care coverage; instead, other health care insurance schemes should be included.
References
Burdrys, G., & Gladys, B. (2001). Our Unsystematic Health Care System. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2001.
Kraemer, J., & Harry M. (2004). “An Employer-Based Solution Is the Best Answer for the Uninsured.” Health Care. Ed. Karen Balkin. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004.
KFF, 2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey. Retrieved From, <http://kff.org/private-insurance/report/2013-employer-health-benefits> June 7, 2014
Stanton, M. W. (2004). Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance. Retrieved From, <http://www.ahrq.gov/research/findings/factsheets/costs/empspria/index.html> June 7, 2014
Messerli, J. (2012). Should the Government Provide Free Universal Health Care for All Americans? Retrieved From, <http://www.balancedpolitics.org/universal_health_care.htm> June 7, 2014