Health Care System Evolution

This paper is an overview about the evolution of the US health care system from the Great Depression to the current Health Reform Bill. I will give an understanding to Medicare and Medicaid program, which also will include a history of these two programs. Even though these two programs are a very complex in helping many poor, elderly, people with certain disabilities, and as well as low income pregnant women they are getting the care that they need as well as what they deserve. Health Care System Evolution, Medicare/Medicaid. Without the introduction of Medicare/Medicaid in July 1965 there would be many problems in the United States today. We would probably have disease outbreaks, and a large population without any health cost coverage. I believe that many people would not go to see a doctor because the cost of private medical care would be too expensive. I also believe that if Medicare and Medicaid did not come into existence that there would be mast amount of death in this country. Between the Great Depression through July 1965 health care had numerous debates in this country. In the 1930s a third-party payer health insurance was introduced including Blue Cross and Blue Shield and others to cover the cost of care in the event of illness or accidents. This only helped the people who could afford private insurance. The United States still was in need of helping the poor and uninsured. In the 1930s the Social Security Act supported public health care for just mothers and children. There was still a great demand to help all other uninsured people. After World War II the government supported and idea for public financed health insurance. In 1959 the Department of Health and Human Services helped in providing hospital insurance to Social Security beneficiaries. In the early 1960s Congress passed the Kerr-Mills bill, which helped the elderly that weren’t the poorest but who still needed assistance with medical expenses. President John F. Kennedy helped in the start of the 1965 bill for Medicare and Medicaid. This bill was known as the King-Anderson bill. This amended the Social Security Act and this covered hospital and nursing home costs for people over the age of 65. In July 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Amendment into law. With that signing of this law came the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid. Today Medicare/Medicaid has helped millions of elderly, low-income people, people with certain disabilities, and low-income pregnant women have health care because of this law. This program helps pay for services such as hospitals, physician visits, and preventive benefits. Medicaid and Medicare are two of the most enduring social programs in the US, providing different services to different groups of people. †1 Medicaid is a state administrated program, so each state varies in there program. Medicaid is also based on their income. Unfortunately, if their income is too high they will not be eligible for Medicaid. In 1990 the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that requires state Medicaid care program s to cover the premiums for children ages six to eighteen whose family’s income is between 100-120% the federal poverty level. In 1997 the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was introduced. This program helps states to receive federal money for uninsured children whose families are not eligible for Medicaid due to their income exceeds the limit for Medicaid. In 1976 formed the Health Care Financing Administration which is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, then in 2001 the name was changed to Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Medicare is a social insurance program that provides health coverage to individuals, without regard to their income or health status. †3 Medicare provides health insurance to people over the age of 65, people with certain types of disabilities and people of all ages with kidney failure. The Medicare program is funded two ways, one by people that paid into most of their working lives by payroll tax revenues, and secondly premiums paid by beneficiaries of the Medicare program. â€Å"Medicare has been one of the fastest growing federal programs. 2 Medicare is broken down to four parts, Part A is the hospital insurance and with this part of insurance all persons aged 65 and older are automatically entitled to this benefit. Part A is broken down to inpatient hospital care, skilled nursing facility care, home health agency and hospice care. Part B is a supplementary medical insurance, which is available to people over the age of 65, which people must paid for through monthly premiums. Part C is the Medicare Advantage that is a set of options for health care under a managed care plan. Then in 2006 Medicare put into law a plan for prescription drugs which is Part D. With these two programs in the United States today helps the poor, elderly, people with certain disabilities get the care that they need and deserve. Today with unemployment at all time high and many baby boomers that will be in need of some type of health insurance; the inception of a new health plan became law. In the year 2010, President Obama signed into law the Health Reform Bill. This will give health insurance to all people. This reform will strengthen Medicare benefits by providing lower prescription drug costs and this will also give a chance to the people who didn’t qualify for Medicaid received the care they need. The reform law will help with Medicare/Medicaid fraud as well as stopping the abuse of Medicare/Medicaid to save taxpayers money. Medicare and Medicaid have come a long way from the Great Depression. I know that there are many abuses within the system and with this new reform bill I do hope that this system will change, because everyone deserves that right health care and to be a healthy person.

A House for Mr. Biswas: Mr. Biswas’ Identity Struggle

Almost all the works of V.S. Naipaul have charaters who are poor and live in rural areas. Always these characters undergo trials and suffer identity crisis.The main protagonist, Mr. Mohun Biswas in V. S. Naipuls’ A house for Mr. Biswas, is not an exemption. â€Å"I am going to get a job of my own. And I am going to get my own house, too.† This vow of Mr. Biswas typifies his longing for freedom, social and family respect and acceptance that constitute his 40 year struggle to gain his own identity.The moment Mr. Biswas is born, he already has the burden of deformed identity that will make him feel that he does not belong: He is born with six fingers. â€Å"Born in the wrong way,† as they say. This alone alienates him from his peers and the society. Adding up to the injury, the attending midwife declares that they should be careful because Mr. Biswas, with his seemingly uncommon figure, will eat up his parents.As he grows up, Mr. Biswas experiences seemingly endless prejudices and ridicules. The community in which he lives in is bounded by traditional superstitions and caste discrimination; thus his misshapen fingers make him feel a real outsider.But misfortune is not only brought by his six fingers; they have been living in poverty even before he is born and their financial woe continues. In fact, it worsens that they hardly eat. Mr. Biswas becomes thin with stunted growth and acquires sores and eczema. This appearance of his heightens his insecurity and his alienation from the people around him.Poverty drives Mr. Biswas to seek employment. He is hired by Dhari to look after his calf. Finally, Mr. Biswas is exulted because someone trusts him. But it is only a short-lived glory as his clumsiness and low self-esteem make him lose Dhari’s calf. He runs away to avoid punishment. Mr.Biswas’ father drowns in the pond when he is looking for him in the forest. This fulfils one half of the midwife’s prophesy when he was born.Anoth er show of Mr. Biswas’ struggle for self-identity is when, in the classroom, he is forced to write â€Å"I am an ass† on the board. Although this is his punishment for disobedience, he will not do this if he has a strong confidence of who he is.The statement is downright degrading. Perhaps a physical punishment, like cleaning the room or running around the ground, is more fitting. This is more dignified than the self-inflicting defamatory words on the board.From here on, Mr. Biswas’ luck does not depend entirely on his own effort as destitution and inevitable consequences force him to live momentarily from one home to another, relying on other people’s aid to feed his stomach.Through this pitiful journey, amidst the manipulation of people around him, he holds on tightly to his principles and ideals; cluthcing to the thin thread of his identity, to his assumption that he, Mr. Biswas descended from noble families and not from common rural nobodies. He consi ders himself to be in line with the colonial tradition and language instead with the custom and tradition of other races in the island. This arrogance may heighten his feeling of alienation.

Sports Performance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sports Performance - Essay Example 17-55, 1987). The agents include the players, the coaches, as well as the referees. Ball allocation and play calling are examples of the numerous tasks involved, whereas the contexts can be during play as well as timeout. These factors interact together in different ways, and create several unique combinations, each of which requires a unique decision. This results in a wide array of situations in sports where decisions are required. One important step to learning about decision-making from sports is thus to weed out the main features of sports performance which make it practical and easy to study. Locating these features provides us with an essential step in comprehending the importance of sports as an epitome of decision-making situations. Studying decision-making (Diederich, pp. 157-166, 2003) in laboratory has one making disadvantage: the results may be inaccurate due to the unnatural environment. In sports, however, the player the researchers observe is under real pressure, and is fully responsible for his or her decision, which ultimately leads to their decision resembling the decision-making found in the real world. This advantage of studying decision-making is one that has only recently come into being appreciated for its worth (Bacharach, pp. 17-55, 1987). ... This feature of sports points out the danger of simulating a natural environment, and the importance of a naturalistic observation setting. The dynamics of sports decisions (Gold & Shadlen, pp. 10-16, 2001) are the second reason why they are ideal to study for the sake of decision-making research. The affect of this dynamism is twofold, to be found in both internal and external dynamics. Internal dynamics hold significance as they show that each decision is made over a course of deliberation, rather than spontaneously. Instead of simply making the decisions as they come, the player/decision-maker accumulates relevant information over a course of time and evaluates it at the time of decision-making. External dynamics, on the other hand, show that the situation itself fluctuates from time to time. At one moment, if the information is available (goalie position), it may be out of reach a second later due to obstruction in the view. These and other variables such as available options rev eal the dynamic nature of sports. Research (Gold & Shadlen, pp. 10-16, 2001) finds that decisions are made either ‘online’, or on a reflective basis. This also links the nature of sports to the dynamism earlier mentioned. Online-made decisions are examples of when the decision is made during the task, or under similar shortage of time. A player will make online decisions during the game. This is as opposed to the coach making the game strategy beforehand, using reflective decision-making techniques, which make thorough use of all the relevant information available. Movement control and decision-making (Mayes, pp. 441-461, 2003) go hand in hand when studying sports performance and this can be aided by cognitive modeling. Cognitive

Woodlice Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Woodlice - Lab Report Example They have a shell like exoskeleton which progressively shed as they grow. The shedding occurs in two stages were the back half sheds first followed by the front part later usually after two to three days later as opposed to the way moulting process occurs to other antropoda where the cuticle are shed in a single process. Metabolic rate is temperature dependent in woodlice which is in contrast to mammals and bird where their rate of respiration depends directly to the external environmental temperatures (Jordan 100). Woodlice are claimed to have unpleasant taste like that of a urine despite been a crustacean which is different from the taste of other crustacean like lobsters or crabs. Woodlice breathe through their plepodal lungs and live in terrestrial environment usually damp or dark places to reduce the rapid rate at which they lose water through their cuticle and excretion (Sutton, Stephen, Paul, and David 67). Although woodlice are preyed by a wide range of insectivores itâ€℠¢s the spiders that prey on them exclusively. This experiment was conducted to determine the relationship between the variation of traits and the natural selection and the hypothesis of this experiment was that the predator preying on the woodlice determine the speed of woodlice to be found in an environment (Smith, SiaÌ‚n 98). The length and dorsal plate in all woodlice was measured using a microscope and recorded. The speed of three woodlice was obtained by taking two rulers to measure the distance and then assorted utensils for simulating predation and to mimic a predator was simulated and the timer was set from the time all the three woodlice started moving until they all reach the end of the two rulers and then recorded in seconds. Woodlice where placed in large specimen dishes and the predator for this experiment which was a spider was simulated RESULTS The woodlice traits were varying as like were the highest standard deviation error was obtained from the speed and the lowest standard deviation error was obtained from the length while the standard deviation error was zero as illustrated in table(1) below Trait Dorsal plate number Speed (seconds/10 cm) Length (cm) Color (values using soil color chart) Mean 7 21.20833333 0.991666667 5.083333333 Standard Deviation 0 +10.29131828 +0.21450989 +1.248187091 Standard Deviation Error 0 +2.100706547 +0.043786648 +0.254785123 Table (1) showing traits, mean, standard deviation and standard deviation error of woodlice In the frequency distribution below blue represents the total number of woodlice while the red represent the number of woodlice that survived after the predator was unleashed. From the graph the number of survived population is higher than the total populati on between the speeds of 1-20 and the same is exhibited between the speeds of 21-40 and between the speeds of 61-80 but between the speeds of 41-60 no woodlice survived. Frequency distribution of woodlice characterized by speed DISCUSSION From the table and the frequency distribution above it is clearly that there is a relationship between the population of woodlice that survived the experiment and their speed. Woodlice that were much fast and those that are somehow slower survived more compared to those that were of average speed as none of them survived and also the predator

Some of the Trades Women Practiced in Early America on the Colonial Coursework

Some of the Trades Women Practiced in Early America on the Colonial Williamsburg site - Coursework Example Women showed that they were able to take care of their families and carry out duties like men. 1. Women worked during these situations for various reasons. Women were at home with their children while the men were off at war. Women were left with bills and responsibilities that men once took care of. The industrial and manufacturing industry needed workers to help create items for war and shops quickly began filling up with women. 2. Working affected the lives of women in many different ways. Women felt independent and no longer relied on men. Women were able to see themselves as workers who could earn money and make decisions on their own. Women quickly became use to the fact that men were not needed for survival as once thought before. Women became very busy trying to juggle work, family and household chores. Some women enjoyed all of the responsibilities while others became overwhelmed. Regardless of feelings felt, women of early America paved a way for women of the

Articaine and Lidocaine for Maxillary Infiltration Anesthesia Article

Articaine and Lidocaine for Maxillary Infiltration Anesthesia - Article Example The results calculated by the authors do not show any statistically noteworthy differences for commencement and duration of anesthesia between the articaine and Lidocaine solutions. It is manifested that, Lidocaine has been extensively used to produce local anesthesia. The authors agree that Articaine is an amide-type local anesthetic and is in use for the past 37 years also, they agree that Articaine is equivalent to, but not superior to, prilocaine for infiltration anesthesia. The authors state that results of comparative studies with lidocaine have been contradictory, because of the variation of epinephrine in the anesthetic agent. Lidocaine with epinephrine is the drug of choice in clinical practice in Finland but for patients with cardiovascular disorders, articaine with its lower epinephrine content is usually chosen with the intention of evading the systemic side effects of epinephrine. The authors have specified the purpose of the study to get a comparative account for the commencement of anesthesia and the duration of action of the commonly used solutions of 4% articaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine and 2% lidocaine with 1:80,000 epinephrine. The authors have selected twenty healthy volunteers (12 female, 8 male) with a mean age of 23.8 yr. The subjects were dental students with no history of allergic reaction to amide-type anesthetic agents and were not on regular medications and had intact lateral incisors. The authors got the protocol for the study, approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Turku and Turku University Central Hospital. The test solutions were- 4% articaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine (Ultracain ® DS, Hoechst AG, Frankfurt, Germany) and 2% lidocaine with 1:80,000 epinephrine (Xylocaine  ®-Adrenaline, Astra, S6dertalje, Sweden). Infiltration anesthesia of the upper lateral incisor was carried out twice in all subjects in such way that each subject received both test solutions.  

Locating Resources Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Locating Resources - Assignment Example The site offers readings about the effects of alcohol to health, side-by-side with policies that would create a win-win solution for alcoholic drinks producers and the consumers. Most of the resources regarding alcohol use are published by medical experts. But there are also resources by policy-makers with regards to the use and distribution of alcohol and making feasible interventions in preventing its misuse. The International Center for Alcohol Policies or ICAP is a non-profit organization that is supported by major alcoholic beverage manufacturers such as Heineken, Carlsberg, and Anheuser-Busch, and aims to reunite scientific and medical data with the responsibilities of these vendors in promoting proper use of alcohol by the consumers (International Center for Alcohol Policies, 2012). Upon browsing the ICAP website, reading resources such as the effects of alcohol in the body, interventions for alcohol abuse, journal articles about the effects of alcohol, and other publications related to the use and distribution of alcohol in many locations. There are also tools for policy-makers in creating guidelines and other rulings regarding alcohol distribution a nd consumption that could create win-win solutions for both the alcoholic beverage producers and the consumers. Resources for brewers and manufacturers such as those that align with the World Health Organization’s policies are also present, especially since the brewers are also held accountable with the use of alcohol, apart from the consumers themselves. Lastly, articles that were authored by ICAP experts and published in other respected journals are also available. While the website of ICAP is an indispensable tool for all people interested in alcohol and its effects, its main target audiences are policy makers and manufacturers of alcoholic beverages, since they deal with the business and legal aspect of product distribution. These people must be

Selection - A Function Within HR Research Paper

Selection - A Function Within HR - Research Paper Example Companies at times may bear huge cost by making a wrong hire decision. It is through good selection methods organisations can restrain their hiring decision. Good selection method also prevents the organisation from making wrong investment and therefore provides the organisation confidence regarding the fact that they are making the correct hiring decisions. The most significant point to consider is that organisations need to pay due consideration towards their main objectives when hiring the candidates. It is through best practices in the process of selection that can enhance the efficiency of the organisation (Hudson Highland Group, 2011). Selection is not only concerned regarding the choice of the right person at the right place but also it aims at maintaining and enhancing the performance thereby improving the rate of retention of the employees and increasing job satisfaction. For the purpose of achieving these objectives, the managers who are responsible for hiring the candidate s are confronted with the candidates possessing numerous characteristics and competencies. It is the duty of the hiring manager to decide the use of the tool that can be used for the selection process in order to reach to the best possible examination of the various candidates. Therefore, it becomes significant to consider the reliability of the selected instrument so that a robust outcome of the selection procedure can be guaranteed. Selection tools predictive validity needs to be paid due attention so that there is best possible forecast of the success of new hires (Hudson Highland Group, 2011). Best Thing to Do To Make Selection Work Selection can be identified as the procedure through which individuals possessing the correct qualification are chosen in order to fill the vacant position of the organisation (Mathis & Jackson, 2010). Selection of candidate for a particular designation signifies hiring a person who can be a contributing factor in the achievement of goals of the orga nization. Whatever be the designations, it is quite significant for the organisation to implement the similar standards of selection so that the effectiveness is enhanced. The companies need to employ best practice selection methodology in order to ensure that the candidate selected is fully profiled and therefore matched with the assignment criteria in terms of functional skills, personal attributes and attitudes, organizational culture and sector experience among others. In order to make selection work, it is quite significant for the companies to make extensive and appropriate use of the database search. The database needs to be of high quality and needs to be updated on a continuous basis. The companies need to focus on quality rather than quantity of candidates. Offering proper training to the line managers or selection team who are involved in the process of recruitment can also aid them in conducting the selection of the candidate as per the set objectives (Daltons Kingswell, 2005). It is to be remembered that a good selection process is one which does not involve any kind of illegal unfairness in the context of gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, race and religion or belief. It is also significant for the selection team to keep themselves updated with the changes in the labour market (Acas, n.d.). Selection Based on Job Analysis Selection is the procedure of choosing the applicant from a

VBD report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

VBD report - Essay Example In the light of the events which have occurred in the Brisbane branch of the firm in a span of six weeks, the scenario behind the resignation of four line managers as a result of inadequate opportunities to participate in the decision making of the business is being considered critically by the company to assess the state of participative management techniques and leadership models in the company’s Brisbane branch. Hence, the purpose of this report is to explore the circumstances surrounding the resignation of the four line managers to better understand the application of the leading and organizing function of management in the firm and present appropriate recommendations for addressing the present issue successfully thereby, reducing turnover rates in the future. The prevalent issue in the organization is associated with the concept of employee turnover which is demonstrated by the resignation of four line manager’s at the company’s Brisbane branch in the time period of six weeks. According to Jang (2008), the concept of employee turnover can be defined as â€Å"the gross movement of workers in and out of employment with respect to a given company†. Moreover, the concept of turnover can be assessed in terms of voluntary and involuntary turnover, which in this case is associated with the former as the employees have willingly resigned from their respective positions (Cascio and Boudreau, 2010). While, the explanation of central causes of employee turnover have often been described by researchers as being unique to the organization or even individual cases, it has already been established that the fundamental reason behind the four resignations which have been received by the company is a consequence of inadequate HR pract ices. As noted by Jackson, Schuler and Werner (2011), poor levels of job satisfaction and absence of fair opportunities in the workplace can promote a sense of