Why is it that as a society we cannot overcome this obstacle? The United States of America, while not flawless, has reached great success and achievements yet cannot provide proper healthcare
There is broad evidence that Americans often do not get the care they need even though the United States spends more money per person on health care than any other nation in the world. Preventive care is underutilized, resulting in higher spending on complex, advanced diseases. Patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes all too often do not receive proven and effective treatments such as drug therapies or self management services to help them more effectively manage their conditions.
Health care in America is a serious issue as it involves families that are unable to receive accessible, affordable and quality medical treatment. Middle class or impoverished families are unable to receive the benefits of health care due to low income levels and a volatile economy. Politicians discuss the reformation of the health care system, but people who are uninsured suffer the consequences of a system that overlooks middle class families in favor of wealthy families, a dominant issue for conflict theorists. Some argue that the health care system is not in need of reform and state that
Because the United States spends the most on a health care system, one would think that most people in the U.S. would be healthy. This is not the case. Surprisingly, the United States does not have a particularly high life expectancy rate. Within this paper I will discuss heath issues in the United States including how heath effects behavior, economics, and social structure. I will also include key stages of medical technology development and population demographics.
America: The Land of the Free. Or, as someone who is familiar with the US health care system would call it, America: The Land of Overpriced Health Care That Covers a Fraction of it’s People. The US spends more money on their health care than any other country, yet there is a myriad of problems that exist within the system preventing it from being efficient. Billions of dollars are poured into the system for medication and treatment, when a lot of this spending is unnecessary.
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.
When it comes to the U.S. healthcare system, there are two sides of the argument. Some Americans may argue that the U.S. healthcare system is the best in the world given the many state-of-the-art healthcare facilities and innovative and advanced medical technology available, and there are those who argue that it is too costly and inefficient on many different levels (Chua, 2006). Despite the large amount of spending invested on their healthcare system, the U.S. consistently underperforms on most indicators of performance compared to other countries (Davis, Stremikis, Squires, & Schoen, 2014). Healthcare costs such as doctor visits, hospital stays, and prescription drugs are more expensive in the U.S. than any other country in the world.
The United States is considered by many to be the greatest country in the world. However, when it comes to health care the US is ranked behind 36 other countries, according to the World Health Organization. If one was to do any research at all, they would find that an overwhelming 34 of these 36 countries all have one thing in common. They all use a universal health care system. This is not just a mere coincidence. The problems and outrageous cost within the US healthcare system causes over 700,000 Americans to go bankrupt every year. This staggering problem simply does not occur in any other industrialized countries. Accounting for these facts the United States needs to move quickly to embrace
Improving the access and affordability of health insurance coverage for all Americans should be a primary concern for those who help create the laws of the land. At this date, there are roughly 44 million Americans without any type of healthcare coverage. Another 38 million people have inadequate health insurance (PBS, 2012). What this all means is that the people who need it the most are putting off seeing a doctor until last moment and then usually end up visiting an emergency room. If they cannot pay for the visit, the cost of that ER visit falls back on the taxpayers, people who have health
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 U.S. ranks one of lowest in health care performance internationally. The U.S. has vast access to quality health care and is far ahead of any other country in technology, but it is one of the most expensive healthcare system in the world but still underperforms more than any other country. The U.S. can benefit learning from other countries that have developed a better healthcare system. The U.S. is a young country compared to other countries, it’s still developing a way to provide the American people universal healthcare. Obama care otherwise known as Affordable care act was supposed to cover everyone, where everyone has access to health care at low cost, but that has been proven not to be true, it has a very low approval rating, for
The U.S health care system, in 2012, cost around 2.6 trillion dollars and is expected to rise to about 4.8 trillion dollars in 2021, if nothing is done to repair the issue. To further illustrate, America is the only wealthy and industrialized country in the world to not have universal health care. Yet, many still believe that the United States may become a communist nation if health care is provided to all. They still believe that it will perhaps send it into an economical crisis. However, the national government should provide universal healthcare, because it is a basic human right, tens of millions of Americans have been left uninsured, and it is a vital part for the recovery of the economy.
Health care systems are organizations that are formed to meet the overall health needs of the population. Health care is regarded as one of the leading cause in promoting not only physical and mental health but the well-being of the population. Legislation is implemented requiring government to offer services to all members of its society. The role of health services and the organizations that provide aid is to focus on the health of an individual and to uphold their human rights. According to WHO (2013), a “well-functioning health care system requires a robust financing mechanism, a well-trained and adequately-paid workforce, reliable information on which to base decisions and policies, and well maintained facilities and logistics to deliver quality medicines and technologies (World Health Organization; 2013).
healthcare system is wasteful and ineffective. Americans are not receiving the high quality care they deserve, especially considering that their health insurance costs are higher than any other country. In an article published by Time Magazine America’s privatized system is described as, “scandalous given the extremely high cost of the U.S. health care system, which takes up 17.1 percent of the Gross National Product. This is 40 percent higher than the average for high-income countries (Carter, Brundtland 1). The U.S. is the heaviest spender on healthcare and as a result one would expect the care citizens receive to be of the highest caliber, this however is not the case. The general standards of health in the U.S. such as life expectancy and infant mortality rate are lower than in multiple countries that spend far less. In addition to this huge ineffectiveness the privatized system is also very wasteful. According to an article from the Los Angeles Times, Despite the fact that the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, millions of americans cannot live healthy lives and protect their children from illness because they are unable to access affordable care (Etehad 1). The tremendous amount of money being spent on health insurance is not making U.S. citizens any healthier and leaves millions of people
Universal health care, a very common system throughout most of the first world that many believe the United States should adopt; yet many more are against it. Many feel that universal care is a socialist idea, and socialism is scary. The United States population needs to be properly educated on the advantages and disadvantages of universal health care through an unbiased source. The United States has had a privatized insurance and health care system since the beginning of the 1900s. These changes were not made frivolously, they were enacted out of necessity. The issue the United States currently faces is whether or not it is reaching a point where it may be necessary for action to be taken. The current state of its health care system does not seem to be able to sustain itself much longer as we see costs continue to rise with no end in sight. It may be time for this country to step back and consider re-evaluating its system from top to bottom. There are several options to choose from and no single system is perfect, at the end of the day it comes down to minimizing the cost and maximizing the efficiency.