Medicare is a health insurance initiative that the federal government finances established in 1965 to cater for healthcare insurance needs of individuals aged 65 years and above irrespective of their medical history, income, and health status. Before 1965, approximately half of senior citizens did not have medical insurance. Presently, Medicare offers health insurance to almost all seniors. The expansion of the program in 1972 targeted covering certain individuals below 65 years having long-term disabilities (Cubanski, et al., 2015) . Currently, Medicare plays a significant role in offering financial and health security to around 60 million older persons and young individuals having disabilities. The program assists in financing various medical care services, such as physician visits, hospitalizations, preventive services, prescription drugs, hospice care, home healthcare, and skilled nursing facility (KFF, 2019) . The paper argues that Medicare needs extending to all U.S. citizens due to the various health benefits it would bring to the population and the country as well.
Since the introduction of Medicare, various changes have been introduced in the program. These have targeted extending benefits, review how Medicare finances providers, improve coverage and access for low income people, modify out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries for services that Medicare covers, strengthen quality, broaden the role that private providers play in offering benefits that Medicare covers, and deal with issues related to the increasing spending in healthcare. The program currently offers health insurance to over 55 million persons with 9 million individuals having permanent disabilities below 65 years and 46.4 million persons aged 65 years and above (KFF, 2019) . The program assists in paying for vital health services with the working population contributing payroll taxes to Medicare while a large number of them become eligible for the program when they attain 65 years, irrespective of their health status or income (Cubanski, et al., 2015) . However, the present U.S. society is witnessing a growing number of healthcare issues, which makes it necessary to extend Medicare to all U.S. citizens to address the rising healthcare concerns.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Medicare comprised around 14 percent of federal government funding in 2014, which was only over a fifth of the overall personal health spending in 2013. Spending in Medicare has declined in the recent years while its growth will continue being slower as opposed to private insurance on an individual basis during the coming years. Additionally, Medicare has remained part of discourse concerning how average growth of spending in healthcare and federal expenditure in the U.S. occur (Cubanski, et al., 2015) . Various challenges prevail in offering increasingly costly healthcare to an aging populating and sustaining future effectiveness of the program. Even individuals such as Senator Elizabeth Warren have expressed concerns concerning Medicare in her campaigns, which support a ‘Medicare for all’ program. Issues such as incidences of corruption in Washington have hindered the transformation of healthcare to ensure that all people can realize delivery of effective care, particularly through Medicare (Herndon, 2020) . Corruption has led to insufficient financing of Medicare while eradicating incidences of fraud would play a critical role in fostering effective financing of the program to cater for healthcare needs of all people in the U.S.
Based on the prevailing state of Medicare in the U.S., it needs reforming in such a manner that it supports the healthcare needs for all in the country. The rising healthcare concerns in the country needs addressing. The program would support the healthcare requirements when incidences of corruption are eradicated within the society. In this sense, to ensure that Medicare emerges a dominant federal policymaking agenda for the entire population in the coming years, policymakers need to consider making major changes to the program. They should focus on areas, such as Medicare spending, healthcare expenditure, quality care access, and out-of-pocket costs, which should serve as major considerations to quality care delivery in the country.
References
Cubanski, J., Swoope, C., Boccuti, C., Jacobson, G., Casillas, G., Griffin, S., & Neuman, T. (2015). A primer on Medicare: Key facts about the Medicare program and the people it covers. Retrieved from https://www.kff.org/medicare/report/a-primer-on-medicare-key-facts-about-the-medicare-program-and-the-people-it-covers/
Herndon, A. W. (2020). Elizabeth Warren isn’t talking much about ‘Medicare for all’ anymore. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all.html
KFF. (2019). An overview of Medicare. Retrieved from https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/an-overview-of-medicare/
