Low Income Families and the Lack of Access to Affordable Health Insurance
Do you or your family have health insurance? If not, you are not alone. The United States is seen as a powerful nation. However, they fail to deliver their citizens the necessary health coverage to live a prosperous life. Health insurance has become more of a privilege rather than right. Health coverage has become privatized in order to make profit out of people living in the United States. Unfortunately, members from low income communities have to deal with this problem. There are people who are very poor which makes them eligible for free or reduced health coverage. However, there are families who are not poor enough for these resources. Families who earn above $30,000 but bellow middle class average are unable to pay for health insurance. They are not poor enough but are not rich enough either to be considered middle class.
Resources are available for low income families, but are they enough? Many of the resources available to them are very limited and not beneficial at all. Counties in California have locations where they can help families apply for affordable health care. The issue is that people are aware that they are eligible but they choose not to enroll. This process is time consuming and requires a lot of paperwork, which discourages people who have a tight work schedule. There are social services where employees guide community members through the process of filling out the paperwork to make it easier. However, not much can be done from their part after submitting the documents. Policies are a big challenge because they are very strict. When browsing through the Covered California website, you can see what needs to be fulfilled in order to qualify for affordable health coverage.
Affordable Care Act has become one of the resources available for people who are 138% below the poverty line (Trivedi et al 2017). Prior to being passed in 2010, a large quantity of people were not offered any form of health insurance or be able to afford the high cost (Arkoosh 2012). People around the United States see this as a big aid because they are eligible for free or reduced health coverage. Ever since the introduction of Affordable Care Act more people signed up for insurance. Prior to that, not a lot of people were encouraged to sign up for health care due to the likelihood of not being able to afford either the medicine or consultation.
There are two government funded health coverage programs that were created in the 1960s; Medicare and Medicaid (Arkoosh 2012). Medicare is only funded through the federal government while Medicaid receives funding from the state and federal government. Medicare is only available for people over the age of 65 while Medicaid covers adults and children living in extreme poverty. California has its own version of medicaid available, since it is also a state funded program (Chabot et al 2014).
For California residents, they are able to go on to the official Covered California website and enter the information required to get a calculated estimate of which plan they are eligible for. The plan for which people can be eligible for depend on the family’s income and size. For example, if you are 20 years old and living in San Jose, you are eligible to receive free or low cost Medi-Cal insurance coverage. However, you need to earn less than $17,000 a year. If you earn $18,000+ and living in the same area, then you will only be eligible for a lower monthly premium (Covered California). However, this is an issue for some people because the copayment is still a bit high and they are unable to afford to pay it.
Although more people have health insurance, a new obstacle was created. Due to the reduced price that people have to pay, some clinics do not want to take insurance from Medicaid. Privatized clinics are the main locations in which they do not accept these forms of coverage. As a result, people are restricted to the services they receive from public clinics. The quality of service at a public clinic is not as good as how a patient would be treated at private clinic (Baker et al 2000). At a public clinic, physicians have to help up to two or more patients at the same time. Which is why there is always a long wait period after the nurse brings in the patient to the room. At private clinics, people pay more for their coverage so it is expected from the physicians to meet patients’ expectations and needs.
There is a debate going on where they want to remove the Affordable Care Act. By removing it, many children and adults will be left with no health insurance. People will go back to the days where health insurance was limited to a certain group of people. There are two points of view because some people are against giving poor families free or reduced health coverage. Tax-payer money is used to fund the programs, therefore, people do not want to pay more taxes.
It is unfortunate that the country cannot come up with an effective solution to a problem that affects the whole nation. However, it is not a simple issue to solve because people look at it through different points of view.
