Evolution Of The American Healthcare System

During the 1960s, health care was one of the fastest-growing industries. Medically helping people was a the primary motivator of medical practitioners, but the increasing salaries was another. In 1969 the average net salary for a medical practitioner was $32,000. Thus, thanks to money motivation in the 1960s, the medical field rapidly expanded with new innovations and technology in order to help people. The decade was an important time in the medical field, and the benefits grew parallel with the costs.

As progress was made in medicine gradually with new medical technologies which could only be used in the hospitals, doctors started charging more, which was unaffordable for most people, with time, all this started to change as the industrialization of the American economy caused families and people to start relying on services from doctors and the

The U.S. healthcare system is entirely private, but the modes of payment for their services are of two kinds: private and public. Healthcare insurance of the U.S. is something that is a dream for people in the developing countries who are dying in huge numbers due to inadequate facilities and insufficient funds for their treatment. It seems like a fantasy for someone sitting outside the U.S. to be able to pay for a million dollar operation just through your insurance even if you do not earn a lot. A common man to be able to afford any healthcare treatment is the biggest security for anyone. With the number of diseases in the world rapidly increasing and our exposure to them becoming more and more frequent, healthcare is a major concern in anyone's mind. (Chua, 2006)

In the current U.S. system the free market prevails and companies, in this case, major insurance providers “compete” for business. This competitive business approach should in theory drive costs down. For some reason, however, an argument can be made that it has produced the opposite result in profiteering. The nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth, boasted over a 10 percent revenue increase in 2013 according to Forbes (2013). Health insurance affordability contributes to the disparity in access to health care, as evidenced by the fact that there are millions that are still uncovered. A greater majority of certain minorities lack both health insurance and the financial resource to seek out either health care or insurance. While insurance companies reap huge profits the percent of private sector companies offering health insurance has dropped to less than 50 percent (Kaiser, 2013). There is decidedly a lack of coordination of care for this at risk population as well, since treatment is rendered sporadically and with continuously changing providers. The last major challenge is that of improving the quality of health care. According to a 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (OIG), an estimated 13.5 percent of Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events during their hospital stay and an additional 13.5 percent experienced a temporary

Cost has different perspectives depending on whom we are speaking about. Consumers refer to cost in reference to the price of healthcare, bills to insurance or payments to doctors directly. Nationally we refer to healthcare spending as a reflection of all healthcare spending that occurs in the nation and is normally measured in a percentage of the Gross domestic product or GDP. Provider costs are seen as the cost to pay staff, buying medical equipment and capital costs for buildings and the maintenance of the buildings infrastructure (Shi & Singh, 2005).

However, this noble concept is being faced on one side with ever increasing costs due to advances in medical knowledge, medicines and technology, and on the other with the financial restrictions and population growth. (REF: http://www.nhshistory.net/shorthistory.htm)

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

Primary care is the backbone of many industrialized nations, but is the US one of them? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The US lags behind such developed nations in its accessibility of primary care by a huge difference. The United States healthcare system fails to ensure the timely preventative and primary care for its residents. The current estimates indicate that there is merely one physician for every 2,500 patients. Not only Medicare beneficiaries, but also privately insured adults struggle in accessing the right primary care physician at the right time. Moreover, maldistribution of physicians only exacerbates the problem, especially for those residing in health professional shortage areas (HPSA).15 Approximately, sixty-five million Americans live in designated primary care shortage areas.13 Such underserved population faces higher disease and death rates and health disparities that then result in higher rates of hospitalizations and emergency department visits—in other words, expensive medical bills.21 More governmental control on the geographic location of primary care physicians can be a first-step to fixing the shortage problem.

The first amazing fact I discovered is that every modern westernized country, with the exception of the United States, broadly accepts and runs some form of socialized medicine. England passed their National Health Service (NHS) Act in 1948, and from that year has provided free physician and hospital services for all her citizens. Government takeover is a concept that contributed to the European approach where government not only owns the hospitals but doctors are also public employees.

Healthcare industry in United States has been an important industry for a long time. It is one such industry that has representation from both public sector and private sector. The current health care system is segregated and fragmented in America. Some states have very effective and efficient healthcare system while some states lack the desired infrastructure. The evolution of healthcare system in USA can be traced back to 1750. The period from 1750 to 1849 is termed as preindustrial period where the care of sick people was primarily handled by families (Brian, 2010). The period of 1850 to 1969 is termed as postindustrial period which reflects the growth of organized medicine and systematic healthcare delivery.

There were doctors in Colonial America. When a doctor visits a patient to check upon the sick person's health, their pay will be in anything but money such as chopped woods, vegetables, et cetera for the poor people. The poor people did not have money as stated in A Visit to a Colonial Times Doctor’s Office. They usually rely on their farming to feed their families and things such as money were scarce. Those who are of the contrary to the low income and the rural settings have better access to health and opportunities as written in Colonial Medicine (5). They can pay their doctor on the spot and can even request their choice of doctors. In modern America, a new change to the health care business is arriving. With the currently new healthcare, everyone shall be able to hopefully

A doctor in the twentieth century is considered a skilled professional and is held with high regards. Currently in the United States, this career comes financial stability and luxury, however, this has not always been the case. In the 1760s, before the colonies became America, a doctor had the same socioeconomic status as a plumber in today’s society. They were considered lower class and their work was viewed as being dirty. The professionalization of doctors in America to the status of physicians in England had various obstacles that prevented the change from happening. During this time, the regulation and payments of physicians changed just as their level of professionalism increased. This paper will discuss the professionalization of

When it comes to the healthcare system, the root of it can be tracked back to the nineteenth century. At that time, compared to a private company, most of the service providers were hospitals, which provide a people free-charge service and inexpensive medicine because they were not profit-oriented institutions. To some degree, the expenditure of a household on healthcare at that time is lower than the one of a modern household. Hospitals played an important role in offering the disadvantaged healthcare resources and fundamental treatment. As the number of patients increased, they still needed working capital to support their expenditure. Most sources of money were from

In Health Care in America, John C. Burnham a professor of history at the Ohio State University, illustrates the changes medicine and public health in America has gone thorough over the course of several centuries. Since the early 1600’s, we have sourced to several different practices, healers, and institutions hoping to prevent another epidemic of diseases such as, AIDS, yellow fever, and most importantly the plague. Breaking his book into different eras allows us to get that doctor-patient relationship and the underlined question of financial cost of health care that we have today. The eras the he divided into are Physiological medicine (1910-1030’s), antibiotics (1930’s-1950’s), technological medicine (1950’s-1960’s), environmental medicine

About one-hundred years ago, most medical treatments were fundamental, cheap, and rather ineffective. Being diagnosed with a condition back then was extremely concerning because it took a long time to recover. Medications like antibiotics, anesthetics, minimally invasive procedures, and non steroidal medicines were not yet invented. Companies themselves attempted to compensate workers and their businesses income during periods of illness. A lumber company from Tacoma, Washington paid two doctors a fifty cent monthly salary to take care of the workers, an early predecessor to the employer-based insurance policies found in corporations today. By the 1920s, the Baylor University Medical Center had developed the scaffolding for modern day insurance. In an attempt to compensate for the hospital’s large number of unpaid medical bills, the hospital proposed the local teachers’ union a deal: 50