American Health Care System Essay

The U.S. health care system is way more complex than what meets the eye. A major difference between the health care system in the U.S. and other nations, is that the U.S. does not have universal health care. Lack of a universal health care opens up the doors for competition amongst insurance, physicians, technology, hospitals and outpatient services.

The United States has a very unique healthcare system. Does this mean that we are simply leagues ahead of the rest of the world in healthcare? Unfortunately, not at all. The ideal of American exceptionalism is apt to describe our healthcare system. That is, our current system is exceptionally bad. Per capita, the United States spends “twice the average of other developed countries” on healthcare ("United States Per Capita Healthcare Spending Is More Than Twice The Average Of Other Developed Countries"). Yet, in the World Health Organization’s ranking of healthcare systems by nation, the U.S. comes in at a dismal 37th place, despite spending the most per person of any country on Earth on healthcare ("World Health Organization’s Ranking of the World’s Health Systems").

The United States health care system ranks 37th in the world. Statistically, it’s bizarre how United States is amongst one of the most advanced nations in the world and the fact that it spends more on its healthcare

Many people believe that the current of health care in the United States is the best health care in the world however it has major shortcomings that has become more visible for the whole world to see. The United States has the most expensive health care system in the world based on health expenditure per capita and on

Despite having the most expensive health care system, the United States ranks last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. The other countries included in the study were Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands,

true? Well, a document stated that Europe, mostly northern parts, perform the highest in the health population, fair financial contributions, responsiveness of the system, preventable deaths, affordability and so on and so on. So America doesn’t have the BEST health care system in the nation. But they do meet a similar economic levels.

First of all, a study has shown that Americans have a lower life expectancy rate than those living in countries that have universal health care, even though the United States pay more for health care (Mahon, Weymouth, “U.S. Spends Far”). According to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, in 2009, the U.S. spent about 8,000 dollars per capita on health care (Mahon, Weymouth, “U.S. Spends Far”). Other countries, like Japan and New Zealand, spent one-third as much, or like Norway and Switzerland, spent two-thirds as much. A separate study by Global Research has shown that in 2007, among seventeen countries examined, U.S. ranked dead last in life expectancy for males (seventy-five years) and second to last for females (eighty years) (Randall, “U.S. Life Expectancy”). The same study shows that women in Japan, a

In fact, the spending disparity between the U.S. and the other twelve countries is so vast that only the graph shown above can truly do it justice (commonwealth fund OECD Health Data 2016). The most shocking fact to consider is that despite such high spending, the U.S. still performs worse than these countries on health care. Where the quality of performance is determined by quality, access, efficiency, equity, and life expectancy the U.S. ranks dead last out of the twelve countries. With the exception of Switzerland, the second highest spending country, all of these countries have health care systems that are single-payer, universal, or both

Everybody talks about how bad the US healthcare system is, which it might be a little bad, but it is not all bad. In the last one hundred years, the life expectancy went from 47 to 78, and 3.5 years in the last decade. That is a huge difference. Since 1960 heart disease went down 56 percent. Doctor visits used to be for when people knew they were going to die, but now they will not die when they go to the doctor. Even though all of those good things have happened, there is still a lot of bad things about the US healthcare. There is an average of 101,000 preventable deaths per year in the US. Most of those deaths happened because of the way the healthcare system is organized. Race, income, and environment influences who gets access to healthcare and who does not, which is just wrong. Even though the life expectancy rate went up, it is still significantly lower than other countries. Over half of people who do not have healthcare are African-American. There are more hospitals in wealthier area, and public hospitals are closing where they are most needed.

The video from PBS titled The Good News in American Medicine portrays the importance of a successful and affordable health care system. Information in this film was factual and neutral because the health care physicians and leaders worked together through trial and error to create systems that were beneficial to many. The United States as a whole does not have the necessary elements that it requires to satisfy the health care needs of all citizens; health care is expensive and divided among many systems that differ in cost and availability. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “The result is that the U.S. spends more per capita on health services than any other country in the world, but lags behind many other countries

No, our healthcare system is not as effective as other countries. Even though the United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world, the healthcare system ranks 37th in the world in terms of quality and fairness. The United States is also the most expensive medical system in the world. However, forty-seven million people are without coverage and hundreds of thousands of people are in medical bankruptcy. You are required to make an appointment before going to the doctor, waiting times to get an appointment are high, and doctor visits are long.

Many would argue that here, in the United States, we have the best healthcare in the world. We benefit from the most up to date medical technologies, medications, and services. People come from every corner of the world to take advantage of our top notch physicians and facilities. But is this reputation warranted, and if so, at what cost? The average annual cost per US resident is $7,681; this comprises 16.2% of our gross domestic product. These costs rank us among the highest of industrialized nations (Lundy, 2010). Does this high expenditure equate to better outcomes? According to the National Scorecard on US Health System Performance (2008), the US received a 65 out of 100 possible points.

America is without a question the leading country of medical and scientific advances. There always seem to be a new medical breakthrough every time you watch the news or read the paper, especially in the cure of certain diseases. However, the medical research requires an enormous amount of money. The U.S. spends the most money on health care yet many people, mainly the working class Americans are still without any type of health insurance and thus are more susceptible to health risks and problems. The concept of health insurance for Americans was formulated over a century ago. Most Americans obtain health insurance from

Referring to the health care performance analysis done by the commonwealth fund (put a reference), the US health care system consistently fails to achieve the balance between the service provided and the expenditure incurred. "Although the U.S. spends more on health care than any other country and has the highest proportion of specialist physicians, survey findings indicate that from the patients perspective, and based on outcome indicators, the performance of American health care is severely lacking," the Commonwealth Fund stated when? Mention the exact reference for this as this is a quote.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that "The health of the individual is almost inseparable from the health of the larger community and that the health of every community in every state and territory determines the overall health status of the nation." It has now become clear that our economy in terms of healthcare insurance is not healthy; the healthcare system in the United States spends 1 cent of every healthcare dollar in the prevention of diseases and 99 cents on the cure. Our healthcare system is the most expensive and yet arguably among the least cost effective in the developed world. Despite the highest per person health care spending among the Organization for Economic Cooperation