| Course | SOS-3700 Challenges in U.S. and Global Public Health |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 6 |
| Paper type | Written assignment on insurance and public health economics |
| Length | About 1,084 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Thomas Edison State University |
| Program | B.S. in Health Studies |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for SOS 3700 Module 6
A Bronze Plan and a County Budget: How Insurance Pays for Care and Why Public Health Struggles to Get Paid
Student Name
B.S. in Health Studies, Thomas Edison State University
SOS-3700: Challenges in U.S. and Global Public Health
Mentor Name
Month Day, Year
A Bronze Plan and a County Budget: How Insurance Pays for Care and Why Public Health Struggles to Get Paid
Introduction
Americans pay for health in two very different ways. Health insurance pays for care when a person is sick or injured, and it is bought by individuals, employers and governments. Public health pays for protecting whole populations, through disease surveillance, clean water inspection, immunization programs and outbreak response, and it is funded almost entirely by government. This paper explains how basic insurance works using one person's year of coverage, then turns to the challenges of funding public health.
How Basic Health Insurance Works
Insurance exists because medical costs are unpredictable and can be large. By paying a regular premium into a pool, each member trades an uncertain, possibly ruinous expense for a predictable one. The pool works because, in any year, most members are healthy and their premiums cover the costs of the few who need expensive care (Wilensky & Teitelbaum, 2023).
Consider Dana, a composite 34-year-old self-employed graphic designer in New Jersey who buys a bronze plan through the state's marketplace. Her plan has a monthly premium, a $7,500 deductible, 40 percent coinsurance after the deductible and an out-of-pocket maximum of $9,200, the highest the Affordable Care Act allowed for an individual plan in 2025.
The table shows several features of insurance at once. Dana pays nothing for the checkup because federal law makes most plans cover recommended screenings and checkups at no charge to the patient. The deductible means she pays the first $7,500 of most other care herself. Coinsurance splits costs after that, and the out-of-pocket maximum caps her total spending, so the plan absorbs nearly all of a catastrophic bill. Her premium, paid every month whether she uses care or not, is the price of that protection.
| Event in Dana's year | What she pays | What the plan pays |
|---|---|---|
| Preventive visit and screening | $0 | Full cost |
| Urgent care visit for a sprained wrist, $280 | $280 toward the deductible | $0 |
| Emergency appendectomy, $28,000 | $7,220 to finish the deductible, then $1,700 coinsurance until she reaches the $9,200 maximum | The remaining $19,080 |
| Follow-up visits later that year | $0 after reaching the maximum | Full cost |
Why Cost Sharing and Pooling Matter for Policy
Insurers design deductibles and coinsurance partly to discourage unnecessary care. The clearest test is still the RAND Health Insurance Experiment of the 1970s and 1980s, in which families were assigned by lottery to plans that charged them more or less at the point of care. People who paid more used less care, but on average their health was about the same, with some exceptions among poorer and sicker participants (Aron-Dine et al., 2013). High deductibles can therefore save money, but they can also lead people like Dana to skip care they need.
Pooling raises a second policy issue. If only sick people buy insurance, premiums rise and healthy people drop out, a cycle called adverse selection. The Affordable Care Act addressed this with subsidies that make coverage affordable for healthy people and with rules barring insurers from charging more for preexisting conditions. Being covered also changes outcomes: Sommers et al. (2017), reviewing the newer studies, found that insurance raised use of needed care, protected household finances and in several studies lowered death rates.
The Challenges of Funding Public Health
Public health has none of insurance's built-in revenue. No one pays a premium for clean water or for the epidemiologist who traces a measles case. Governments must choose to fund these services, and they have funded them poorly.
The first challenge is size. Public health activities account for only a few cents of every health dollar in the United States, and their share fell after 2002, with per person spending declining after the 2008 recession (Himmelstein & Woolhandler, 2016). Medical care, which has paying customers and powerful advocates, absorbs most new money.
The second challenge is the form of the money. Federal dollars mostly come labeled for a single purpose, an immunization grant, a tuberculosis grant, a preparedness grant, and the label decides what the county may spend them on. A county health department cannot easily move money from a well-funded program to a neglected need, such as rising overdoses or extreme heat. The basic infrastructure that supports every program, including data systems, laboratories and trained staff, is the hardest thing to fund through categorical grants.
The third challenge is instability. Public health budgets swell during emergencies and shrink afterward. Health departments hired staff with pandemic funds after 2020, and in March 2025 the federal government canceled about $11 billion in remaining pandemic-era grants to state and local health departments, forcing layoffs and program cuts in many places. The Trust for America's Health report (Trust for America's Health, 2024) describes this pattern as a cycle of neglect and panic that leaves departments rebuilding capacity after every crisis. The Prevention and Public Health Fund, created by the Affordable Care Act to give public health a steady source of money, has repeatedly been tapped by Congress to pay for other priorities.
Why Funding Is Worth It
These challenges matter because public health spending appears to save lives. Studying local health departments over 13 years, Mays and Smith (2011) found that each 10 percent increase in spending was associated with declines of roughly 1 to 7 percent in deaths from causes such as infant mortality, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Unlike most medical care, these benefits reach entire communities, including people without insurance.
A County Example
The county where I live shows how these challenges combine. Its health department runs restaurant inspections and communicable disease investigation with state and local money, but most of its prevention work, such as lead screening and immunization outreach, depends on grants that must be renewed each year. When a grant ends, the program ends with it, regardless of local need. Staff spend significant time writing grant applications and reports instead of serving residents. A more stable, flexible base of funding would let the department plan around its community's needs rather than around funders' priorities.
Conclusion
Insurance works by pooling risk and sharing costs through premiums, deductibles, coinsurance and out-of-pocket limits, and the Affordable Care Act shaped those features to make coverage more available and preventive care free at the point of use. Public health lacks any comparable financing mechanism. It depends on government decisions that have kept its share of spending small, its grants narrow and its budgets unstable, even though evidence links public health spending to fewer preventable deaths.
References
Aron-Dine, A., Einav, L., & Finkelstein, A. (2013). The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, three decades later. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27(1), 197-222. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.1.197
Himmelstein, D. U., & Woolhandler, S. (2016). Public health's falling share of US health spending. American Journal of Public Health, 106(1), 56-57. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302908
Mays, G. P., & Smith, S. A. (2011). Evidence links increases in public health spending to declines in preventable deaths. Health Affairs, 30(8), 1585-1593. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0196
Sommers, B. D., Gawande, A. A., & Baicker, K. (2017). Health insurance coverage and health: What the recent evidence tells us. New England Journal of Medicine, 377(6), 586-593. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsb1706645
Trust for America's Health. (2024). The impact of chronic underfunding on America's public health system: Trends, risks, and recommendations, 2024.
Wilensky, S. E., & Teitelbaum, J. B. (2023). Essentials of health policy and law (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
What the SOS 3700 Module 6 instructions ask for
Module 6 pairs two course objectives that seem far apart, how ordinary American health insurance works and why public health is so hard to fund, and its written assignment asks for both. Across the course the five written assignments are worth a quarter of the grade, and each must open with your name, the course and its code and the current term. It does not specify which modules carry them, so this sample pairs one with Module 6. Prompts here commonly ask you to define insurance terms, explain how cost sharing and risk pooling work, and identify why public health is hard to fund, often with an example from your own state or county.
Inside the SOS 3700 Module 6 example
The paper opens by separating the two ways Americans pay for health, which frames both halves of the assignment. The insurance section explains pooling briefly, then uses one composite enrollee and a table of her year's bills to show the deductible, coinsurance, out-of-pocket maximum and free preventive care at work. A policy section adds evidence on cost sharing from the RAND experiment and on adverse selection and coverage. The funding half names three challenges, size, form and instability, each with evidence, and then makes the economic case for public health spending with a study linking spending to fewer deaths. A county example applies the challenges locally before the conclusion ties the two halves together.
Reading the SOS 3700 Module 6 grading rubric
Mentors score written assignments from 0 to 100. On this module's assignment, they look for insurance terms explained correctly and applied, not merely defined, and for public health funding challenges that are specific and supported. A worked example, such as a year of bills, shows understanding better than a glossary. Higher marks go to papers that connect the two halves, for instance by noting that insurance pays for treatment while prevention depends on government budgets. Accurate figures with sources and years, and citations to the course text in APA style, are expected. Papers lose points when numbers are wrong, such as an out-of-pocket limit from the wrong year, or when funding challenges are asserted without evidence or explanation.
Common SOS 3700 Module 6 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Papers on insurance tend to slide into a string of glossary entries. Use one example person and follow the money through a year instead; it shows you understand how the terms interact. Check every figure, especially plan limits, which change annually. On the funding side, avoid vague statements that public health needs more money; explain why its money is small, narrow and unstable, and give evidence that spending matters. If the prompt mentions your state or county, look up your health department's budget or annual report. Leave out names of real patients, employers or coworkers. For a version built on your own Module 6 prompt, forward the instructions and we will start from them.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Thomas Edison State University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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SOS 3700 Module 6 questions, answered
Where can I find a free SOS 3700 Module 6 sample paper?
On this page: Dana's bronze plan year walks through premiums, deductibles, coinsurance and pooling, and a second half lays out three reasons public health stays underfunded, all cited in APA style.
What is the difference between a deductible and coinsurance?
You cover bills alone until the deductible is used up; after that the plan pays most of each bill and you pay your coinsurance share, which stops once you hit the yearly out-of-pocket cap.
Why is public health hard to fund?
It has no premiums or paying customers, receives a small share of health spending, arrives mostly in disease-specific grants and swings between emergency surges and cuts.
Does public health spending save lives?
A study of local health departments found that 10 percent spending increases were associated with declines of roughly 1 to 7 percent in several causes of preventable death.
What was the RAND Health Insurance Experiment?
A randomized study that assigned families to plans with different cost sharing and found that higher cost sharing reduced care use without measurable average health effects, with some exceptions.