Future Challenges in Healthcare Choice

RUNNING HEAD: FUTURE CHALLENGES
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Future Challenges

Future Challenges
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Healthcare
Choice 1: Health Insurance (USA)
According to Soete, Gonzalez, Dahlin & Dewulf (2017), health insurance is a product
that covers the surgical and medical expenses of an insured individual. In accordance with
the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 27.5 million or
8.5 percent of people in the US did not have health insurance in 2018 and 91.5 percent of
people have health insurance coverage (Cicala, Lieber & Marone,2019). Further, as
compared to 2017, the rate of uninsured people in the US increased from 7.9 percent to 8.5
percent and in between that, people in the US with insurance overage decreased by 0.4
percent (Census,2018). It can be seen from figure 1 that uninsured people increased and the
number of insured people in the US decreased. On the other side from the insured person,
most of the people in the US depend on private plans such as employment-based health
insurance, direct purchase of health insurance and TRICARE. In the US 66.1% of insured
people have an employment-based plan and only 34 % of people depend on public health
insurance plans (Hamming, Henry & Davis,2019).
Figure 1: Type of coverage and change between 2018 and 2019
Source: (Census, 2019)
In the US, most people who are uninsured are under the age of 19. In total 5.5 % of
children below 10 are uninsured in 2018 and from its 7.8% of Children are from below

Future Challenges
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poverty, from that 4.6% of children from Asian and Black origin and 18.3% of them are non-
citizen (Niles,2019). It is also highlighted that most uninsured people are from the South
region and from the west region (Figure 2). Moreover, health insurance in the US is a
mandatory thing under the ACA that is “Obamacare”, Americans require to have health
coverage for their families and for themselves. Americans who failed to get insured have to
face a tax penalty. But from effect to 2019, elimination of penalty may lead to a decrease in
the number of health insured or 4 million Americans choose not to have health insurance in
2020 (Niles, 2019). According to WHO, at the global level, 56% of the population has health
insurance and remaining have not insured yet. Hence, the US has a good rate and the
percentage of people who are insured (Seshadri, Strane, Matone & Rubin,2019).
Figure 2: Percentage of Uninsured Children aged below 19
Source: (Seshadri, Strane, Matone & Rubin,2019)