Response 1
I also believe that our health care system confronts various challenges, including rising costs, decreasing quality, and disparities. The US, for instance, spends one of the highest budgets in health and yet the costs of accessing care services continue to rise. Some of the factors you have pointed out that contribute to disparities are race, education, and incomes. Race and income indeed continue to affect population health outcome negatively. While you highlight that there are opportunities to formulate and implement health care policy, I think that the Department of Health needs to focus on the Healthy People 2020 goals (Sunshine et al., 2017). An effective policy needs to consider the views of communities. Healthier communities are the indicator of a sound health care system. The final factor you have highlighted is the impact of politics on the formulation of health care policy. I think that political interests tend to overlook the needs of lower-class Americans as they focus on profits (Berinsky, 2017).
References
Berinsky, A. J. (2017). Rumors and health care reform: Experiments in political misinformation. British journal of political science , 47 (2), 241-262.
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Sunshine, J., Dwyer-Lindgren, L., Chen, A., & Mokdad, A. H. (2017). Seat-belt use in US counties: limited progress toward Healthy People 2020 objectives. Health Affairs , 36 (4), 636-639.
Response 2
The US is indeed one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but with considerable challenges in the health care system. You have pointed out that insurance coverage is one of the persistent issues, which is true. For instance, data from the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) illustrate that at least 30 million Americans aged 65 years and above are uninsured (CDC, 2020). This number is rising due to Covid-19-related challenges. However, I think that such disparities in the health care system reveal the underlying issues related to weak policy formulation, lack of political interest, and population disparities. Moreover, while I agree with you that advocacy can help in changing the care system, I tend to believe that the US care system is profit-oriented. For instance, research shows that the public does not trust the motives of decision makers (Richmond et al., 2017). Profit-seeking organizations are taking advantage of Americans.
References
Richmond, J., Powell, W., Maurer, M., Mangrum, R., Gold, M. R., Pathak-Sen, E., ... & Carman, K. L. (2017). Public mistrust of the US health care system’s profit motives: Mixed-methods results from a randomized controlled trial. Journal of general internal medicine , 32 (12), 1396-1402.
CDC. (2020, April 14). Health Insurance Coverage . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved August 4, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-insurance.htm
