Characteristics of the US Health Care System

Unlike Australia, Canada, and Germany, the United States (U.S) does not have universal health care system. The U.S. health care is an unregulated, hybrid system that financed by private and public sectors. The first characteristic of health care system is that it is not centrally regulated by the government. Similarly, the second characteristic of the health care system is “access to health care services is selectively based on insurance coverage” (Leiyu & Singh, 2012, p. 9). Only individuals with insurance coverage have health care access.
Basic Characteristics of the U.S. Health Care System
In the United States, a central agency of government is not available to monitor budgets spending for health care and regulate health care services that are available. It is a free health care market system. Insurance companies can set health care policy premium and drop coverage on patients with pre-existing medical conditions. Doctors set their own price for a service delivered, as well. There is no regulation to cap the premium. It results in high health care cost that leaves millions of Americans uninsured. Nevertheless, the government plays an important role in the health care delivery. They finance, control, and regulate the public health care system, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The federal and state governments regulate budget expenditures, set reimbursement rate, policy, and standards for medical services that provided to recipients of Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP. Currently, the Medicare’s delivery system is funded by federal income tax and general revenues from public contributors (Chernichovsky & Leibowitz, 2010, p. 206). Medicaid and CHIP are funded jointly by federal and state governments.
Primarily, the U.S. health care is financed by private health insurance companies, employers, and individuals who pay cash for a received service. Based on the 2009 US health insurance coverage status, 36.9 percents are private health insurance; 30.6 percents are government health insurance, and 16.7 percent are no insurance (LaPierre, 2012, p. 2). In fact, most Americans are privately insured by employer-based insurance that also included their family members as dependents (LaPierre, 2012, p. 2). This is a capitalist society where patients pay physicians directly for the service they received. Some people may pay with their private funds for an insurance plan. When they get sick, their health insurance companies directly pay physicians for the medical care delivered.