End of Course Reflection

While conducting research for the final paper for this class, I learned a lot of interesting things about the Crimean and Civil Wars that I did not know about before. I did not know much about the Crimean War especially, and I was appalled after doing the research about the conditions that the injured and sick British soldiers had to go through in the hospitals. I learned a lot about Civil War hospitals while reading the first book for this course, and after this paper I was able to tell the differences and similarities between the two wars and how they treated their soldiers. The main thing I took away from all the research I did for this final paper was that there were many similarities between the hospitals of both the wars; however, the Civil War doctors had an example to help improve their hospitals a lot quicker thanks to Florence Nightingale. I am glad I picked such a historic topic as this, and I am also glad that I learned a whole lot on the history of health care in the United States and around the world.

Brasfield Chapters 6-10

With our current system of national health care, there are many problems that need to be addressed if this current model is going to survive. Some people say that the current model should just be thrown out and we should start over from scratch in order to solve some of the new problems that are being discovered almost every day. I think the old system needs to be adjusted but not completely thrown out. It has served our nation well for the past couple of decades, and I believe it can be tinkered with enough to help iron out the problems that we are encountering right now. One of the main problems that needs to be solved, in my opinion and a lot of people around the country, is cost control. As stated in this book, the United States spends the most of any developed nation on health care, yet receives the least from what we spend. That needs to change if national health care is going to continue to exist in our country the way it is now. And if a good solution is not figured out for cost control, then I believe the system is too flawed to be changed enough to be saved and needs to be thrown out. Cost control could help solve many of the problems we are trying to address right now, but so far a good solution has not been offered in order to fix it. That needs to be solved sooner rather than later, and I believe one of the only ways to do that is to gather the top officials from every major medical care sector in the same room as some of the political parties' top officials and make them stay there until a solution is agreed to. That is the only way we as a nation will not go bankrupt from health care spending, and that is the main problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Brasfield Chapters 3-5

In these chapters, the author mainly talked about subjects that had already been covered in the books we have read in the past. The author went over the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, and how both of these health care plans have changed over the years. It also mentions again the resistance against these health plans that the government were forced to deal with. Many items have been added on in order to improve both Medicare and Medicaid, but overall, both of these plans have remained largely intact. This book also goes over the predicaments that both these health plans face, and what the future might hold in regards to what health care might look like for people in the United States in the next decade. She lists several options of what might happen, and the intended and unintended consequences of each of those solutions. One of the main problems for the future of health care is the rising costs that are draining federal resources and forcing them to raise taxes and/or premiums. The citizens do not like the new raises, but that is the only way that health care will remain the way it is. The author also offers some solutions to these problems, but nothing is for certain and health care might look very different in ten years than it does today.

Brasfield Chapters 1-2

The thing that stuck out to me the most when I read these two chapters was the numbers that she described relating to the amount of money Americans spend on health care each year. This amount totals in the trillions, and continues to rise each year that the same policy is in place. Experts have predicted that health care costs will continue to rise through research and what has happened in the past. If they continue to rise the way they have the past couple of decades, health care costs could become uncontrollable and need to be managed through a bill introduced in Congress. If not, health care costs could conceivably cause the country to bankrupt while attempting to keep up with the rising amount of costs. Americans will not like to be taxed more to pay for the costs, so Congress and the President will have to intervene with a bill that will not cause too many people to be unhappy while at the same time controlling some of the costs.
The author also mentions that the number of employee-based insurance will also decrease, while at the same time offering some predictions of what might happen in the future if current trends continue. The future predictions will not be well-liked by most Americans, maybe causing major changes in the current system. With all of that said, the main focus needs to be in controlling the cost, while at the same time making sure that most Americans still possess affordable health insurance.