Improving Health Care for the Poor

A significant proportion of the population in the United States cannot afford health care insurance. Most estimates place this proportion of the population at approximately 12 percent (Feldstein, 1998); however, Cockerham (1998) estimates that the proportion of the population without health care insurance at 17.8 percent. Within an estimated total population of 260 million, therefore, more than 46 million have not health care insurance on the basis of Cockerham's (1998) estimate.

The people without health care insurance include the working poor (the indigent), as well as the destitute and the fortunate few whose assets allow them to fund any level of personal or family health care need. A majority of those persons without health care insurance in the United States are able to receive some level of health care through the Medicaid program. The Medicaid program is operated by the states but is regulated and largely funded by the federal government.

Over the past five years, however, the Congress has been quite busy redefining poverty, need, and welfare eligibility. The result has been that millions of indigent persons (the working poor) have lost their access to Medicaid. Others who have ejected from welfare through the imposition of time limits and other criteria have been forced into the ranks of the indigent, further swelling the ranks of

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licity (variable). 5. Dissimilarity (relation). a. Social differentiation (process). b. Individualized member (role). c. Heterogeneous group (collectivity). d. Group expansion and individualization (dynamic pattern). e. Group size (variable). The issue of providing health care services to undocumented aliens within the United States may be assessed most effectively within a Simmelian schema of social forms through application of the relational forms of enmity and host/stranger. With respect to access to health care services by undocumented aliens within the United States, the issue does not center on the denial of such access on the basis that an individual is an undocumented alien, but rather on the denial of free or subsidized access to health care services for undocumented aliens (Nickel, 1986). Within the relational form of enmity, thus, a process of conflict characterizes the relationship between the bulk of American society and the undocumented aliens within this society. Moralists within American society contend that anyone in the country requiring health care services should have access to such services, regardless of whether such an individual can pay for the required services (Blankenau, 1993). Moralists
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Approximate Word count = 8443
Approximate Pages = 34 (250 words per page)

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