The US health-care reform is aimed at getting more people insured and making sure that people can get appropriate treatment in appropriate settings. It’s also focused on “helping to keep chronic illnesses such as diabetes in check,” states Newsweek. However, the proposed bill “doesn’t explicitly tackle…how the medical industry’s response to unexpected public health crises and epidemics would differ,” reports Newsweek. The reform is focused more on everyday issues, rather than extreme outbreaks, and there’s not much in either the House or Senate’s bills about closer observation of outbreaks.
Because the health-care reform lacks focus on bigger issues, Newsweek states that, “it’s worth pondering if the current bills could have changed how some of the other big public-health crises of the past few decades would have played out: does having a more comprehensive health-care plan in place make a nation less prone to various epidemics and illnesses?” To answer this question Newsweek talked with several experts and asked them their opinions on the topic, and overall most of them agreed that crises wouldn’t have been completely avoided, but they might have been a little less severe.
What do you think? If we had enacted health care reform ten or twenty years ago, what tragedies might have been averted?
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