Substance abuse is a far-reaching problem in the United States and the globe at large. However, the treatment for drug and substance abuse has been discriminative since healthcare insurers are adamant to cover persons diagnosed with substance abuse (Smith, Stocks, & Santora, 2015). The government of the United States under the stewardship of former President Barack Obama, formulates and ratified the Medicare policy as a means to warrant the availability of care for persons that are diagnosed with substance abuse. In this accord, this critical analysis paper seeks to explore the Medicare policy and analyze its efficiency in improving the wellness of the general Unites States populace.
Background of Medicare
Medicare was an initiative that was created by the United States government in the year 1965. The Medicare program was promulgates to cover a need in the society, based on the observation made regarding the fact that people age over 65 years found it incredibly impossible to find quality patient care. Therefore, in a bid to fortify the existent healthcare gap, private insurance healthcare coverage was extended to people who are aged over 65 years as a means to .increase the longevity of life for the elderly populace.
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The adamancy of private health care insurers to cover persons of all age stemmed from the fact that the notion that an illness is bound to get an individual hospitalized generating massive bills that would deteriorate the insurers’ financial pool. The era was before the widespread availability of prescription drugs to combat common illnesses. Since the elderly populace is deemed a vulnerable group, there was a need to ratify a policy that would ensure that health care coverage is extended to all members of the society regardless of the age, gender, or preexisting conditions. The policy was later extended to carter for individual that had a history of substance abuse.
About of the Policy
The Medicare policy covers individuals that have pre-existing conditions, those that have a history of drug and substance abuse, and the elderly. Although the policy resulted in an increase in national health care spending in the United States, it resulted in a holistic improvement in the quality of life for the entirety of the United States populace (Roberto et al., 2017).. The current Medicaid provisions are stipulated under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act, also referred to as Obamacare (Fairman et al., 2017). The United States population is not entirely on board with the policy and that was a significant talking point in the recently completed elections that saw President Donald Trump being accorded the mantle to lead the United States.
The Success of Obamacare
The success of Obamacare has been the basis through which Barrack Obama’s success as the president of the United States is judged. The fact that the policy removed the discriminative clauses that prevented private health care insurers from covering people with pre-existing ailments, the elderly, and those that have a history of drug and substance abuse, opened a huge, initially discriminated subset of the populace to the world of private insurance (Marmor, 2017). Since the promulgation of Obamacare, more than 20 million people that were not initially covered, now have benefits to private healthcare coverage. The endeavor would result in the expansion of medical coverage as an approach geared towards improving the population’s quality of life.
In conclusion, the Medicare program as encapsulated under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 0obliged private healthcare insurers to cover people with a history of substance abuse and finance substance abuse treatment (Roland, Stevens, & Oderda, 2019). The intervention improved the quality of life for people in the United States indiscriminately. Therefore, it can be inferred that opposing such a model will be ill-advised.
References
Fairman, B. J., Hwang, S., Alexandre, P. K., Gallo, J. J., & Eaton, W. W. (2017). Costs of substance use disorders from claims data for Medicare recipients from a population-based sample. Journal of substance abuse treatment , 77 , 174-177.
Frakt, A. B., & Bagley, N. (2015). Protection or harm? Suppressing substance-use data. New England Journal of Medicine , 372 (20), 1879-1881.
Marmor, T. R. (2017). The politics of Medicare . Routledge.
Roberto, P., Brandt, N., Onukwugha, E., & Stuart, B. (2017). Redaction of substance abuse claims in Medicare research files affects spending outcomes for nearly one in five beneficiaries with serious mental illness. Health services research , 52 (3), 1239-1248.
Roland, C. L., Ye, X., Stevens, V., & Oderda, G. M. (2019). The prevalence and cost of medicare beneficiaries diagnosed and at risk for opioid abuse, dependence, and poisoning. Journal of managed care & specialty pharmacy , 25 (1), 18-27.
Smith, M. W., Stocks, C., & Santora, P. B. (2015). Hospital readmission rates and emergency department visits for mental health and substance abuse conditions. Community mental health journal , 51 (2), 190-197.
