Ensuring Access to Quality Care

Running Head: PLATFORM

Ensuring Access to Quality Care

On March 21, 2010, the American government took its first, lurching steps towards implementing universal health care. In a heavily contested vote, avidly watched by the nation, the House narrowly passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The bill, a centerpiece of President Obama’s election platform (Boston Herald, 2007), attempts to resolve entrenched inequities in health care access and availability, and will hopefully enable approximately 32 million currently uninsured Americans to have access to health insurance, and by extension, affordable primary care. The bill is a step towards resolving a previously unconscionable disparity in access to primary health care between the nation’s social classes, and represents a historic cultural shift in perspective: that of perceiving health as a basic human right, rather than a commodity. However, several of the bill’s provisions actually potentially endanger access to primary care. Although this is an important step, more remains to be done to resolve the plight of the working poor with regards to access to basic, primary care.

Definition of Issue

Background

According to the New York Times (2010), passage of the bill capped a “yearlong legislative rollercoaster”, but in truth, the debate over universal health care in America has lasted decades, stirring up much the same controversy throughout its troubled history that attends it now. As early as 1912, goaded by the establishment of a national health care program in Germany, the American Association for Labor Legislation drafted a bill to provide universal health coverage which was scuttled with the advent of the First World War (Lepore, 2009). National health care was revived in the twenties by the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, formed to address the perceived need for medical care for everyone. (Palmer, 1999). Roosevelt’s new deal legislation half-heartedly attempted to include...