Sociology Discussion on Health Insurance, Lifestyle, and Education

This sociology discussion explores the importance of health insurance in safeguarding finances and promoting improved health, examining how insurance is obtained through employment and public programs like Medicare and Medicaid. It then delves into the impact of lifestyle choices, such as smoking and obesity, on organizational premiums and the role of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in providing affordable health insurance. The discussion also addresses challenges in education within developing countries, including lack of qualified teachers and funding, emphasizing the importance of education for societal development and suggesting scholarship programs to support students. The discussion references relevant research on these topics.

Running Head: SOCIOLOGY
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Student Name
Institution Name
Sociology

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SOCIOLOGY
Discussion 1: Health Insurance
Health insurance is important as it safeguards finances since medical problems tend to be
costly. Improved health is another benefit as it covers frequent healthy checkups. These
checkups are important as it is easy to identify a condition that might be treatable early.
Insurance can be obtained when one gets employed. This is the most common as most
people get their health insurance covers from the employer. Another avenue that offers family
health care insurance is the public programs like the Medicare, Medicaid and State Children’s
Health Insurance Program.
Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) is an organization that provides coverage for
health at monthly or yearly fee while Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) consists of doctors
and hospitals who agrees with an insurer to provide health services at a cheaper fee for clients
(McClellan, 2011). Both HMO and PPO are similar in that they offer health insurance cover.
PPO can be more beneficial to patient as it allows discount below the normal charges.
Discussion 2
Lifestyle choices such as smoking and obesity can have impacts on organization
premiums when paying for a person health insurance. Smoking is unhealthy and can lead to
disease like cancer (Vijayvergia & Denlinger, 2015) while obesity arises from poor diet
(Mozaffarian, Hao, Rimm, Willett, & Hu, 2011). In case such a situation arises where a person
gets cancer from smoking or obesity due to poor diet, the organization pays for treatment.
Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a law enacted by president Obama to give affordable
health insurance. ACA will not create failure in the market of insurance companies as it still
require the health insurance providers to offer reduced cost insurance to the low income earners.

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ACA will help improve decisions about smoking and diet to avoid diseases arising from lifestyle
choices
Discussion 3
Developing countries are experiencing a lot of problems in providing education. Some of
the reasons as to why these obstacles are being faced are due to lack of qualified teaching staffs.
The people teaching in schools do not have the required experience to impact students. Another
obstacle is lack of funds as these countries have poor economy and there are no investors in
education sector.
Developing countries should prioritize education since its key to bring development. It’s
through education that great minds and talents can be identified and nurtured thus bringing new
development in future. Education also helps people understand that in order to avoid financial
crisis during times of healthy problems they can be able to acquire insurance that will cover their
families.
Leaders should give scholarship to students to encourage them learn (Ganimian &
Murnane, 2016). These scholarship programs should help the needy students who cannot afford
to pay for education and they have good grades.

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References
Farhud, D. D. (2015). Impact of lifestyle on health. Iranian journal of public health, 44(11),
1442.
Ganimian, A. J., & Murnane, R. J. (2016). Improving education in developing countries: Lessons
from rigorous impact evaluations. Review of Educational Research, 86(3), 719-755.
McClellan, M. (2011). Reforming payments to healthcare providers: The key to slowing
healthcare cost growth while improving quality?. Journal of Economic Perspectives,
25(2), 69-92.
Mozaffarian, D., Hao, T., Rimm, E. B., Willett, W. C., & Hu, F. B. (2011). Changes in diet and
lifestyle and long-term weight gain in women and men. New England Journal of
Medicine, 364(25), 2392-2404.
Vijayvergia, N., & Denlinger, C. (2015). Lifestyle factors in cancer survivorship: where we are
and where we are headed. Journal of personalized medicine, 5(3), 243-263.