CHS/SOC 303 Health & Society Writing Assignment

CHS/SOC 303 Health & Society Writing Assignment

CHS/SOC 303 Health & Society

Writing Assignment #3 Instructions

Healthcare reform is the topic on everyone’s minds. The last several presidential elections have hinged on this question: how can we deliver better healthcare to more Americans?

The Obama administration helped pave the way for the Affordable Care Act, which is the first major healthcare reform in a long time. It is not perfect and the country seems potentially split on whether it has done more good than harm. Democrats propose defending it, while Republicans at least talk about repealing it and replacing it with something else.

The goal of this essay is not to decide, politically, who is right and who is wrong. Instead, I want you to think about some of the critical questions at the heart of healthcare reform based on what you’ve learned about Heath Care in the US and the world.

CHS/SOC 303 Health & Society Writing Assignment

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Using the readings and lessons from Weeks 8-10, answer the following questions in a 3-4 page essay. Be sure to fully answer each question and provide at least 3 outside citations to support your arguments.

1. The US stands out from the rest of the developed world in allowing insurers and providers to set prices for health care without immediate involvement of the government.

1. What has the impact on the cost of healthcare and the provision of healthcare been from this arrangement?
2. If you were to make the case for the US government to centrally set prices, what are two positive changes that you might imagine?

i. And what are two negative changes that might come through a change establishing the government as the central price adjustor?

2. Despite the enactment of the Affordable Care Act and the increase in the number of insured Americans, we are now seeing significant drops in life expectancy – mostly for non-Hispanic whites – for the first time. Maybe researchers attribute this to the opioid epidemic and the so-called deaths of despair that follow.

1. How might we explain these two seemingly contradictory trends? An increase in the availability of healthcare at the same time people are starting to die earlier than their parents and grandparents? Be sure to focus your answer on health care.
2. How might other nation’s healthcare systems handle the opioid epidemic differently?

CHS/SOC 303 Health & Society Writing Assignment

References

For this writing assignment, you are required to provide at least 3 references to support your work. These references cannot include your textbook. Instead, I expect you to find materials that come from reliable sources. I will allow news articles, but they have to be credible. How do we know that they are legitimate?

Credible sources will be:

• In-depth – articles should be more than multiple paragraphs and instead include

  references themselves to data, experts, or other research efforts.

• Intended to inform. Credible references are not meant for entertainment or click-bait.

  Instead, they are meant to educate an audience on an issue.

• Purposeful – credible references should provide information that can be used to make

  decisions, potentially in policy, treatment, or research

  Examples include:

• News articles. I care less about political leaning here, but more about credibility. Left,

  right, neutral – I am not judging politics. Instead, if I check on a reference I want to see

  that the material is informed by legitimate research and science.

• Scientific articles. PubMed is a great place to start looking. Peer-review is important.
• Websites – places like the CDC, WHO, the UN, or other nonprofits are valid. Wikipedia is

  not.

  Online Information to Review:

  https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/04/life-expectancy-us-health-care/