Health Care has been a continuing topic of conversation, especially among the candidates in the on-going debates. A serious topic indeed, health care raises so many questions, especially to people of college age, who will soon be off their parents insurance if they are still on it when they graduate college.
For years, kids under a good insurance plan take it all for granted. Paying co-pays, visiting selected doctors and other things are just some of the hassle that come along with insurance.
On the front page, a light was shone on eight different situations typical to people around the United States — the student continuing onto grad school, the unemployed graduate, the graduate looking into major corporations for employment and what they have to do to make sure that they are covered by health care.
Those situations reveal important factors in the debate about health care today, but there are also other issues to know about as well.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people without health insurance coverage overall rose from 44.8 million people in 2005 to 47 million people in 2006.
A continuing debate is the struggle for African American families to receive health care. Why? Because African Americans are more likely to become diagnosed with a disease than any other group of people. Not only can 24.3 percent of African Americans not afford health care, but also the ones who can, have trust issues with doctors that date back to the 1920s and the Tuskegee Experiment, which was when African American male sharecroppers were denied treatment for Syphilis.
The main source of care for people without health care is the emergency room. Taxpayers need to understand that public hospital emergency rooms then bill governments for costs to treat those without insurance. People without insurance also don’t get preventive care. When the uninsured get sick, they get really sick and end up costing those with insurance in the long run when they go to the emergency room.
It’s not something you hear about everyday, but these are definitely other issues in health care that need to be addressed. Yet another topic of growing concern is the rapid growth of Americans traveling to other countries to undergo major medical surgeries.
Although it has existed for years, Americans are now more actively contacting medical tourism travel agencies to arrange trips because they either have poor medical insurance, or none at all.
Places such as Latin America, Thailand, India and Malaysia are major traveling destinations for those seeking surgeries. When this first began, it was mostly for cosmetic surgery. Good idea, right, going on vacation and coming home with a brand new face and body?
Something must be done. When Americans are leaving their own country because they can get operations for thousands of dollars cheaper, is when Congress should raise an eyebrow. Devising a medical plan to cover everyone living in the United States is not an impossible task, especially for someone who wants to be president of the United States.
As college students, we should begin learning more about our own personal insurance, because it will be valuable information in our future, especially in the upcoming Presidential Elections. Our generation should be listening to what every candidate has to say, because it affects our future, more than we may understand.
