Fitness School

Today in America, many more of its population is in need of affordable health care. Increasingly, workers are finding themselves on the receiving end from their employers who are reducing the services provided or passing on the increases. It’s because I’m one of the many affected by this that I know because prior to this year my company’s health care package was really good. Suddenly, my employer announced it was getting too expensive and was switching health care providers.

Unfortunately, the old system didn’t benefit everyone in the company but the new one would, it was claimed. Although I am just as well looked after with this new policy, I’m not entirely convinced. The problem is that in an effort to find a less expensive insurance, having my husband and daughter on the policy is now costing twice the amount it did before. Other than a few exceptions, everyone else seems to benefit from this new arrangement but because I haven’t had a raise but I am taking a great deal less home so my family can have health cover.

To be honest, I got on well with the old provider but can’t see that happening here even if the health care plan is half decent. An affordable health care provider may have been the excuse for the change but the only result some of us have seen is higher out of pocket expenses and co-pays, not to mention reduced paychecks. It makes more sense when you realize just how good the old policy was because I didn’t pay cent when I stayed in hospital 2 years ago giving birth to my daughter. Compare this to the new health care plan and I would be out of pocket by over 4,000 dollars.

You also have to bear in mind that this additional expense is just the hospital bill and doesn’t include the additional work fees I must now pay. The availability of affordable health care plans is on the increase which should help those less fortunate. For workers in companies without health care plans and single mums for instance, this is a God send. Although these programs are a good idea for those less fortunate there are always people who want to abuse the system.

Perhaps some form of means testing is needed for people so that only genuine cases have the benefit of affordable health care. I get annoyed because it’s the upright taxpayer who has to finance these schemes for the needy and not the state. Financially speaking, my company saw the real advantage to this switch and some of the employees. It worked out just fine for my employers when they switched providers but many of us are paying the price. If we are to help the worst affected, we need to start looking at long term options for Americans in providing cost effective, affordable health care.

The children of HBV -infected mothers are not the only risk group, and in the United States they are not even the largest risk group. Among adolescents and adults, who constitute a much larger part of the infected population, HBV is transmitted in various ways: sexual contact, especially among homosexual men and people with many heterosexual partners; injection drug use; occupational exposure (among health care workers, for example); household contact with someone who has an acute infection or is a chronic carrier of the virus (this can be by some inadvertent contact with blood, such as that left on a razor or toothbrush); and blood or blood product transfusion. And there is still considerable mystery about HBV infection: despite what is known about these routes of transmission, almost one-third of people with HBV do not have any identifiable risk factor at all. Rates of infection differ among various racial groups: prevalence of the infection among blacks is three to four times greater than among whites.

There are no documented cases of hepatitis b information being transmitted by a person being breathed on by someone with the illness, catching it from an insect bite, or getting it through contaminated water.

Vaccination programs for these risk groups have not been very effective in reducing transmission. Three doses of the vaccine are required and it has been difficult to persuade injection drug users, for example, to follow through on all three shots. Sometimes health care providers are not aware of which groups are at high risk, and so do not identify people who should be vaccinated. Screening of blood donations has revealed carriers, but efforts to vaccinate their household members and sexual contacts have met with limited success. Health care workers have had somewhat better luck: Vaccination among this group has reduced rates of infection. But none of this has had much effect on the general rates of HBV infection.

By 1997, about 84 percent of children between nineteen and thirty-five months of age had been vaccinated. Although no figures are available for kids aged eleven and twelve years, many states have implemented middle­school entry requirements for hepatitis B vaccination, so coverage will increase among these preteens.