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Challenges within the Medical Department

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Challenges within the Medical Department

Throughout history, particularly since 1900, consecutive USA administrations have tried to initiate policies to give Americans meaningful, affordable Medicare. However, the situation has transitioned from bad to worse despite such initiations involving a vast amount of budgetary allocations. Despite this massive spending and many such finances being directed to Medicare, there are still significant challenges in the medical sectors. Significant challenges are in the areas such as health insurance coverage, political sustainability, and expenditure.

One of the main challenges is the disparity in achieving universal healthcare across the USA states. This disparity could be attributed to the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2012 that ruled out US states from expanding Medicaid eligibility which has led to significant drop in the number of states adopting the Medicaid expansion. So far, even after the Federal Government gave consent to pay 100% Medicaid expansion costs for the initial three years and 90% thereafter, just 26 of the US’s 50 states have preferred to expand Medicaid (Rice et al, 2014). Such reluctance has left almost half of the eligible US residents with no Medicaid coverage.

Another evident challenge is the increase in Medicare expenditure, 3 years after the ACA’s commencement. Few months after inauguration of the 2010 ACA Act, expenditure indicated low levels perhaps due to Medicare payments cuts, reduce hospital readmission and growth of responsible care centers. However, there has been a rebound in the Medical Department expenditures due to the introduction of blockbuster drugs thus continually resulting in high spending. Similarly, it is increasingly becoming difficult to control costs as physicians and hospitals merge to augment their market in negotiations with major insurers (Rice et al, 2014).

Another challenge is the Strong,...