Workforce Overview

The largest labor force in the United States is the health care labor force and represents more than 3% of the total labor force. There are many different occupations and workplaces in health care that a lot of people don’t think about. Many people think about physicians, nurses and occupations along that line when they think about health care occupations, but there are also pharmacists, massage therapists, dieticians, midwives, and many more. Health care employees are not just employed at hospitals and clinics; they may work for insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, colleges, and various other places. The list of health care occupations and places where health care workers are employed is constantly expanding and adding new employees and places as technology changes and grows. New and more complicated technology is being invented and put to use, so more technicians are needed to train individuals on how to operate them.

One of the main problems with the workforce is that it is not distributed evenly throughout the country. There are many people that are part of the health care industry and a lot of them reside in urban areas because there are more opportunities to advance their careers and usually more money available. This causes a lot of rural areas to be deficient in the number of medical facilities that are available for the public. The government has looked at several ways to persuade physicians and other health care professionals to relocate to rural areas. One of them is the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), which makes scholarships available to students that commit to working in an underserved area. Through more health care reforms more programs like NHCS can be possible and more underserved areas of our country can get the medical they need and deserve.

For a more complete list of health care occupations go to this website and look at the various other positions in the health care industry:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/careers-health-care/directory.shtml

For more information on the geographic maldistribution of physicians look at this research article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361233/#__secid158484

For more information on National Health Service Corps go to this website: http://nhsc.hrsa.gov/

Philosophical/Political Stance:

“The American people understand that good health is the foundation of individual achievement and economic prosperity. Ensuring quality, affordable health care for every single American is essential to children's education, workers' productivity and businesses' competitiveness. We believe that covering all is not just a moral imperative, but is necessary to making our health system workable and affordable. Doing so would end cost-shifting from the uninsured, promote prevention and wellness, stop insurance discrimination, help eliminate health care disparities, and achieve savings through competition, choice, innovation, and higher quality care.”

- Democratic Party

Our group is politically affiliated with the Democratic Party and is on-board with the Obama Administration when concerning Health Care Reform. We firmly believe that all people should have equal access to health care since we view it as a basic right; we value life and care about the disadvantaged. We believe that the government should be actively involved in health services delivery to decrease overlap and excess spending since we value effectiveness and efficiency. We believe that everyone should have the chance to receive an education, regardless of his or her socioeconomic status to be able to contribute to society in the health profession or elsewhere. We value the environment and prioritize clean, and energy efficient technologies that can be applied to science and health since we believe in the advancement of science.

Health Care professionals make up the largest work force in the United States; however, there are still over 45 million Americans who are unable to receive medical care because it’s too expensive which is unacceptable. Our current health care system is more expensive and our insurance companies cover less people than other nations such as Germany, Taiwan, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Our beliefs and values truly represent a system in which more Americans would receive affordable coverage, premiums would be lowered, and superior quality would be guaranteed. In the fragmented health care system today, around ten percent of premature deaths are due to the lack of accessible health care. Imagine if you had a friend or loved one that died because he or she was unable to afford care.

If the Democratic Party can pass this health care reform bill, majority of Americans would receive health care at an affordable cost. The quality of the care would increase since the government would provide incentives, information and support to help physicians and other professionals work together to improve quality of care while reducing costs. We also are committed to passing Obamas governmental insurance program that would force other insurance companies to lower their rates in order to keep their business. This new public health insurance option would compete with private insurers and keep them honest. In doing so, people could choose to stay with their private insurers and those who couldn’t afford private insurance would have the option to be covered under government insurance. According to the Obama-Biden Health Care plan, the workforce would be addressed as the following:

“Primary care providers and public health practitioners have and will continue to lead efforts to protect and promote the nation’s health. Yet, the numbers of both are dwindling, and the existing workforce is further challenged by inadequate training for new health threats such as bioterrorism and avian flu, antiquated funding and reimbursement mechanisms, and limited access to real-time information and technical support. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand funding—including loan repayment, adequate reimbursement, grants for training curricula, and infrastructure support to improve working conditions— to ensure a strong workforce that will champion prevention and public health activities.”

I encourage you all to visit the following links to learn more about our party and our political views which are explained in further depth: http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/health_care/hr3962_WORKFORCE.pdf.

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf


Some people value an individual’s health as priority over community well-being and in turn believe health care should be a market justice system. Believing in this only allows for a larger gap between the rich and the poor and will only make our nation weaker. As Americans, we need to strive for a strong and healthy well being for all people so that we can prosper and become a fierce competitor with other countries collectively. We need to focus our energy onto prevention and health promotion so that people will use less sick days and be a better employee and aid to the company. We need to provide care for our future generations who are currently in an obesity epidemic since they are our nations future. We, as members of the Democratic Party, adhere to spend our time making this nation the best place to live on earth and we need your support to make this a reality!


Push for Health Care Reform for a brighter future and a better tomorrow!


YES WE CAN!




Sources in APA:
What it means to be a Democrat (n.d.). Retrieved February 12, 2010, from http://www.csus.edu/org/democrat/beliefs/index.html

Democratic National Committee. (2007). Health Care for All. Retrieved February 12, 2010, from http://www.democrats.org/a/national/american_dream/affordable_health_care/

The New England Journal of Medicine. (2009, November 5). Reform and the Health Care Workforce- Current Capacity, Future Demand. Retrieved February 12, 2010, from http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/361/19/e38

‘Delivering Health Care in America’ A systems approach

Affordable Health Care For America Act: House Committee On Ways and Means. (2009, October 29). Affordable Health Care For America Act. Retrieved February 12, 2010, from http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/health_care/hr3962_WORKFORCE.pdf


Obama for America. (n.d.). BARACK OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN’S PLAN TO LOWER HEALTH CARE COSTS. Retrieved February 12, 2010, from http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf

Shi, L., & Singh, D. A. (2008). Delivering Health Care in America: A Systems Approach (Fourth ed. ). Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett .

Welcome!

Welcome to our US Health Care Blog concerning Work force! Thank you for taking the time to visit our site, we really appreciate it! We highly value your opinion and views on this interesting topic and would love for you to post a comment, or several! The more we can communicate about this controversial topic, the more we will gain in this learning experience. Stay tuned for our first post in which we will address our beliefs and values as it relates to Health Care and the Work force!