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The Role Of Government For The General Welfare Of Citizens

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The role of government is to promote the general welfare of citizens. Arguably, this promotion should include providing and financing health care services. While other developed nations like Canada, New Zealand, and Switzerland have campaigned and accepted universal coverage as the method in which to promote welfare of citizens, the evolution of these efforts in the U.S have failed1 .For more than a century, universal coverage advocates in the U.S, believed they were close to success in the development of universal coverage and each time they faced defeat. The first notable effort was made after the burden of World War II, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed that the nation would support national health care. He died before his plan was presented2. The next notable and successful effort was Lyndon B. Johnson’s passing of Medicare and Medicaid, the nation’s first national health care programs13. These policies, however, failed to address the challenges faced by our fragmented health care system: Millions of Americans remained uninsured, health disparities existed based on a myriad of social determinants, and individuals and the government as a whole were spending high costs on health care3. In March of 2010 the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted into law under the Obama Administration4 .The ACA was created to reform our health care industry by expanding health care coverage, improving the quality and services of care while lowering the burden of cost, and ensuring

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