Public and Community Health Problems

Public and Community Health Problems

Carol Stotts

Community & Public Health

Professor Morthland January 14, 2011

I believe one of the greatest achievements in the 21st century will be the availability of affordable health care coverage for all American citizens regardless of their financial status.On March 23, 2010 President Obama sidned the health care reform legislation into law.

The bill constitutes the biggest expansion of the federal health care guarantees in more than four decades. The President emphasized that some 4 million small-business owners will be able to get tax credits to help cover the cost of producing health insurance to their employees, while insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage for children because of pre-existing medical conditions .Insurance companies will no longer be able to drop people from coverage when they get sick, or to place lifetime or annual limits on the amount of health care people receive.

The overall $940 billion plan is projected to extend insurance coverage to roughly 32 million additional Americans.The compromise package would expand insurance subsides for middle-and-lower-families, and scale back the bill’s taxes on expensive insurance plans. (CNN Politics, March 23, 2010).

San Bernardino County is the largest county in the contiguous United States with a population of two million living in the diverse geographic and civic environments. Often referred to as the “Inland Empire”,where one in four residents are uninsured. The Inland Empire, whose economy relied heavily upon new construction, has been hit hard by the recession and now has one of California’s highest rates of uninsured residents. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of Inland Empire residents without insurance increased by 271,000.

Patrick Petre, administrator of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, said the hospital, which is owned and operated by San Bernardino County, has been affected by...