The U.S. health care system consumes a huge amount of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, and is a massive system that provides essential and world-class care to millions of people (Niles, 2016). As a result of this huge burden of cost associated with it, the U.S. healthcare system has been critiqued, and has played a major role in sparking debates about changes to the way the U.S. healthcare system is run and organized. Thus, healthcare has been on the forefront of many American and politician minds over the last decade and beyond, and many proposals and attempts have been made to change and adapt the complex and influential U.S. healthcare system. One such attempt, that brought about incredibly influential change to the U.S. healthcare
This study has also covered the weaker aspects of the prevailing American healthcare system. The financial basis of healthcare improvement lay in enhanced business savvy on the part of the administrators and providers of healthcare. It is the lack of healthcare and business savvy that is impeding the American citizens from accessing adequate health. The American healthcare system involves socialized and privatized healthcare. The socialized healthcare system is inefficient due to lack of financial balance to support adequate care for every American.
United States health system, the biggest in the world, employs most up-to-date and state-of-the-art technologies in healthcare. U.S. is the world leader in research and development in the biomedical field. The magnitude of the research in healthcare and medical innovations that come out of the U.S., in general have been the largest. U.S. contributes, influences and drives medical research in various parts of the world with great emphasis on the quality of human life. U.S. pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies have access to biggest markets in the world and yet Americans spend more than 17% of country’s GDP towards healthcare, the largest in the world. In spite of that, US healthcare system suffers from complex rules,
The U.S. health care system faces challenges that indicate that the people urgently need to be reform. Attention has rightly focused on the approximately 46 million Americans who are uninsured, and on the many insured Americans who face rapid increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. As Congress and the Obama administration consider ways to invest new funds to reduce the number of Americans without insurance coverage, we must simultaneously address shortfalls in the quality and efficiency of care that lead to higher costs and to poor health outcomes. To do otherwise casts doubt on the feasibility and sustainability of coverage expansions and also ensures that our current health care system will continue to have large gaps even for those with access to insurance coverage.
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
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 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,
On March 23, 2010, the President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) which represents the most significant regulatory that impacts the U.S. healthcare systems. With PPACA, 32 millions of Americans are expected the coverage and expanded access to health care and medical care. Due to the baby boomers and the downfall of the economics, there will be millions of people are seeking for low rates medical care which will create great impact on U.S. healthcare. According to Commonwealth Fund analysis, the U.S. healthcare ranks last on every cost-related. Therefore, healthcare becomes the top social and economic problem that American is dealing with. Like all other well-developed countries, there are both private and public insurers in the U.S. health care system. ‘What is unique about the U.S. healthcare system in the world is the dominance of the private element over the public element’ (Chua, 2006). Healthcare system in the Unites States can be divided into three different groups: Medicare, Medicaid, and Managed Care. Each plan provides different coverages for different groups of people.
The cost of healthcare has and will continue to rise in the United States. Some factors that contribute to those hikes are due to the consumer demanding more complex services from health care providers. Things such as new technology, equipment, research and testing procedures, along with pharmacy, and the number of uninsured are all dynamics of the increased cost in health care. The U.S. health care system relies heavily on third-party payers; these payers include commercial insurers and the Federal and state governments. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, the National Health Expenditure grew 3.6% to $2.9 trillion in 2013, or $9,255 per person, and accounted for 17.4% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Id.
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
Understanding public policy in the United States is basically understanding the concept of what the government do and why they do the things they do. Policies are made to focus on causes that matters to the people. “Public policy may regulate behavior, organize bureaucracies, distribute benefits, or extract taxes--or all these things at once” . In the United States, there are a substantial number of public policies made, and every now and then individuals are responsible individually to utilize these arrangements for their needs. Policies primarily are provided for the people under the national government for human rights and services. Public policy involves, and are inputs in all matters such as health care to welfare, social security, civil rights, defense, criminal justice, education, and taxation and so on. In this paper we will focus on introduction of how the America 's health system work. We will explore the kind of health care/insurance America provides and cover. As well as some of the challenges American citizens are facing, which are about the expenses that may affect the society in the future plus the protection of human rights and services.
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.
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
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).
Besides assessing the current state of America’s healthcare system, the historical perspective of America’s healthcare sector demonstrated how it evolved to be this way and it allows the public to understand the potential impediments to reform. The professionalization of medicine and the emergence of insurance companies has been a long and gradual process. Several previous Presidents have developed blueprints for healthcare reform with varying degrees of success. This section explores the growth of healthcare in America from its colonial days throughout the twentieth century.