There has been plans geared towards improvement of healthcare in the U.S to enable meet its population needs by improving the health status of Americans. Top on the list of its agenda is to provide appropriate healthcare to all people within the U.S. borders which is a goal that is achievable according to PR Newswire (2007).
Healthcare Provision and Resources
In the United States almost all levels of healthcare are delivered by the private sector providers. Many hospitals and health facilities are owned and run by profit making companies. Doctors and other health workers are either independent practitioners or happen to work for private-sector healthcare institutions. Access to healthcare is acquired through employment-based private health insurance. The government is the one that finances the non-working poor and the retired citizens through the two large government social insurance programs which are Medicaid for the poor which is funded by both the state and the federal general revenue and Medicare for the retired people which is funded by a federal payroll tax and general revenue.
The three arms, that is, Medicaid, Medicare and the Private Health Insurance therefore covers about 84% of the whole population while the remaining which is composed of working poor and their families depend on their own financial resources or charity in order to take care of their medical bills which in most cases is not adequate. Mostly their medical care is often below the required standard and their health is always compromised due to lack of adequate care (Institute of Medicine, 2002). The aging population has also increased which has led increase in the incidences of chronic diseases like diabetes, and heart diseases...
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...al support or manpower. Individuals from the community may decide to offer voluntary services to their fellow community members who are not self-sufficient or who do not have adequate support from caregivers or family. Trained medical personnel who hail from the same community may also come in and give their services for free or they may train a few volunteers who will then assist the people in the community to access the services with the same care but at a reduced cost. Generally it possible to reduce the gap through shared responsibility between the community and the resource providers and the state.
Reference List
Institute of Medicine, (2002). Care Without Coverage; Too Little, Too Late.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
PR Newswire, (2007). PR Newswire Association LLC. Retrieved
from: http://search.proquest.com/docview/448726907?accountid=45049
Access to healthcare provides financial stability by assuring people that they will not be financially destroyed by injury or illness. Additionally, when people can afford regular medical care they tend to avoid chronic problems and financial stress. In a study provided by the American Medical Students Association, researchers reviewed the costs and benefits of universal health care. They came to the conclusion, after reviewing other articles and statistics from multiple sources, that, “The annual cost of diminished health and shorter life spans of Americans without insurance is $65-$130 billion.” (Chua 5) This comes from people not having adequate health care and then losing their jobs because they...
For decades, one of the many externalities that the government is trying to solve is the rising costs of healthcare. "Rising healthcare costs have hurt American competitiveness, forced too many families into bankruptcy to get their families the care they need, and driven up our nation's long-term deficit" ("Deficit-Reducing Healthcare Reform," 2014). The United States national government plays a major role in organizing, overseeing, financing, and more so than ever delivering health care (Jaffe, 2009). Though the government does not provide healthcare directly, it serves as a financing agent for publicly funded healthcare programs through the taxation of citizens. The total share of the national publicly funded health spending by various governments amounts to 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, GDP (Jaffe, 2009). By 2019, government spending on Medicare and Medicaid is expected to rise to 6 percent and 12 percent by 2050 (Jaffe, 2009). The percentages, documented from the Health Policy Brief (2009) by Jaffe, are from Medicare and Medicaid alone. The rapid rates are not due to increase of enrollment but growth in per capita costs for providing healthcare, especially via Medicare.
While most countries around the world have some form of universal national health care system, the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, does not. There are much more benefits to the U.S. adopting a dorm of national health care system than to keep its current system, which has proved to be unnecessarily expensive, complicated, and overall inefficient.
spends about 15% of its gross domestic product on healthcare, thereby making it the largest sector of the economy” (Goldman, D., & McGlynn, E., 2005). “Americans are not healthier than some of the other developed nations, regardless of these extensive costs” (WHO, 2010). “Almost 40 million Americans are uninsured and about 18% of Americans under the age of 65 receive half of the recommended healthcare services” (Goldman, D., & McGlynn, E., 2005). “Though, quality of care was noted not to vary much in cities with respect to lack of insurance, poverty, penetration of managed care and availability of physicians and hospital beds” (Goldman, D., & McGlynn, E., 2005).
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Nearly every American can agree that our current health care system needs reforms. Primarily do to the fact that 45.7 million Americans are without health insurance. That's approximately 16 percent of Americans who sometimes have to do without healthcare, or face crucial financial responsibility. The main issues are admission to healthcare, and the affordability of health care. Before 1920, doctors didn't know enough about diseases to really provide useful care to sick people. Therefore the...
Healthcare is one of the major issues that America faces today. The health insurance companies are destroying America’s health care system by raising their premiums and deductibles. One great concern, access to health care is definitely on the decline. As of 2007, more than 75 million adults-42 percent of all adults ages 19 to 64- were either uninsured or underinsured (Commonwealth Fund Commission 9). The health care system in America needs a complete overhaul, reform.
The health care system in the United States encompasses so many individuals, businesses, and interest groups. Also, it can be difficult to pinpoint the most optimal approach to serve everyone’s unique needs and wants. This has led to a major health-care crisis in the society. As a matter of fact, the effect of the health-care crisis in the American society has been a longtime situation, and an effective policy response must focus on what is most enriching in the society: aiming to improve the overall quality of the system and positively impact the health status of all citizens, while subsequently minimizing costs.
Health is by far the most important thing for a human being, so every penny invested on it has to work. This essay is about the study of the current state of American health reforms and why they are desperately required. Unfortunately things are not that bright as they might seem, an American investing most of their money on health care is basically not getting the level of health care they deserves. With all the investment in the medical field and all the advancements of medical domains, government should be providing best health care in the world for its people.
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Reforming health care system has been a hot topic for many years. A society's commitment to health care reflects some of it's most basic values about what it is to be a member of the human community (Cockerham, 2012). Legislators have been proposing diferrent policies in an effort to solve this dilemma without significant progress. All proposals to expand insurance coverage have had certain flaws and were sometimes far from being ideal or even realistic.
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Knouse, S. B. (2005). The Future of Human Resource Management: 64 Leaders Explore the Critical HR Issues of Today and Tomorrow. 58(4), 1089-1092.