America's Flawed Health Care System: Literature Review

Maruthappu, M., Ologunde, R., Gunarajasingam, A.. (2012). Is health care a right? Health reforms in the USA and their impact upon the concept of care. Annals of Medicine & Surgery. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2049-0801(13)70021-

As Americans we should all be afforded access to healthcare. Access to healthcare is an individual right according to the human rights amendment. The human right to health guarantees a system of health protection for all. The human right to health means that everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which includes access to all medical services, sanitation, adequate food, decent housing, healthy working conditions and a clean environment (What is the Human Right to Health and Health Care, 2015). However there are strengths and weaknesses to every healthcare system and the U.S. Healthcare system is not exempt. I plan to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the U. S. Healthcare system (What is the Human Right to Health and Health Care, 2015).

In “The American Health Care Paradox”, Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. Taylor explore why the American health care system achieves mediocre results, despite spending a higher percentage of its gross domestic product than any other country in the world on health care. They explain that health care is more than just getting medical treatment, but there are social factors that affect a person 's health. The authors claim that more government spending on medical treatments is not the solution to the health care paradox, but we should focus more on social needs that have a greater impact on health. Case studies and interviews with physicians, other health care providers, and social service providers are used to support the authors’ claims. Though the authors do not explicitly state the path they believe the American health care system should follow, they give examples of foreign health care systems and domestic health care projects that may point in the right direction.

The first characteristic of the US health care system is that there is no central governing agency which allows for little integration and coordination. While the government has a great influence on the health care system, the system is mostly controlled through private hands. The system is financed publically and privately creating a variety of payments and delivery unlike centrally controlled healthcare systems in other developed countries. The US system is more complex and less manageable than centrally controlled health care systems, which makes it more expensive. The second characteristic of the US health care system is that it is technology driven and focuses on acute care. With more usage of high technology,

T.R. Reid uses cost, quality, and choice to fully evaluate healthcare systems all around the world. As an American citizen, I have always thought our system was unfair. The poor suffer more than the rich for going to see a doctor for the same reason. In chapter one of The healing of America, T.R. Reid comments on how many Americans have also started to notice that the American healthcare system is not as great as we once thought. Not only is it unfair, but it is also expensive and unsuccessful (9). By looking at all the other countries’ healthcare systems, Reid would then be able to better pinpoint how America can better its health care system by taking portions of those health systems.

Reid’s goal is not only to compare health care, but to discover solutions for America within foreign models. Like many Americans, Reid is quite dissatisfied with the U.S. health care system. Even more, he is perplexed by how an industrialized, wealthy nation like the United States could rate so poorly in comparison to other nations. “With the help from many scholars and the Kaiser Family Foundation I traveled the world searching for a prescription to fix our country’s seriously ailing health care system” (8). While simultaneously seeking care for an injured shoulder, Reid is able to personally experience various health care systems, seeking elements that could help America.

Health care is meant to provide medical or psychological care for the entire human population. In order to pay for health care, one must have health insurance or be able to pay out of pocket. However, health care in the United States are nowhere near cheap. In fact, America has the worst healthcare system in the world. America’s health care system is a direct-fee system. A majority of countries around the globe are government controlled. Taxes primarily finance their health care access and delivery. Unfortunately, for America, the US government does not pay for most of its citizens’ health care (Health Care Issues, 2015). America’s health care system is in jeopardy due to increasingly high prices and lack of access.

The single most important impetus for healthcare reform throughout recent history has been rising costs (Sultz, 2006). In the book called The healing of America: a global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health care, Reid wrote that the nation’s health care system has become excessively expensive, ineffective, and unjust. Among the world’s developed nations, the US ranks near the bottom for healthcare access and quality. However, the US ranks at the top for health expenditure as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and average of $7,400 per person (Reid, 2010). Therefore, Americans are spending

2. Here, the research shows that in many situations, healthcare professionals are urged to conduct unnecessary tests and procedures in order to rack up the bill for insurance claims to then

According to Joe Conason, "America 's current health care system wastes considerably more than a trillion dollars every year. We know that because countries such as France, Germany, Japan and Finland, with comparable standards of living to ours, spend roughly half what the United States spends annually on health care per citizen, while covering everyone and achieving better results." (Conason, 2009) The United States healthcare financial systems are severely flawed - affecting the overall cost control, services, and care made accessible to its clients. The rising costs in healthcare are reaching new highs, and with rising costs, there doesn 't seem to be much change in the quality of the care being given. Clients coming in and out of these

An issue that is widely discussed and debated concerning the United States’ economy is our health care system. The health care system in the United States is not public, meaning that the states does not offer free or affordable health care service. In Canada, France and Great Britain, for example, the government funds health care through taxes. The United States, on the other hand, opted for another direction and passed the burden of health care spending on individual consumers as well as employers and insurers. In July 2006, the issue was transparency: should the American people know the price of the health care service they use and the results doctors and hospitals achieve? The Wall Street Journal article revealed that “U.S. hospitals,

Across the country, Obamacare is failing the American people with high costs, few options, and broken promises of lowering healthcare costs. Under Obamacare, premiums have risen by over 40% on average, and over 100 percent in some places making unaffordable health care services. In 2017, five states have only one insurer on the Obamacare marketplace and nearly a third of all counties have only one insurer. According to the McKinsey Center, the number of eligible Americans with only one insurer to choose from increased from 2 percent in 2016 to 18 percent in 2017. Compared to 2016, in 2017 enrollment fell by 500,000 people and enrollment is millions of people below what was initially estimated.

The term “Best Healthcare System” is very subjective because what part of the healthcare system are you talking about and who are you comparing it to all nations, western nations, or members of the U.N. The world is build up of many different nations with many different types of healthcare systems so it is

The world is not perfect. This is the phrase used by almost all humans because not all humans are perfect. These imperfections may include war, poverty, hunger, and much more. One of the world’s problems and at least in this country deals with women’s health. Health care is one of the imperfections here in the United States. Health care in the United States has been in hot topic both in past and recent years. Access and having adequate health care can be a real struggle for women and other social groups in this nation. There are different types of factors in which effect how certain people experience this type of low quality and inadequate health care.

Brawley calls for rational healthcare, healthcare drawn from results-based, scientifically justifiable treatments, and not just the peddling of hot new drugs.