Socialized Medicine two words that strikes fear in a large percent of Americans and an even larger percent of insurance companies. Socialized Medicine is defined as “a health care system in which the government owns and operates health care facilities and employs the health care professionals, thus also paying for all health care services.” The United Kingdom is one of the several countries in the western world that uses a socialized system to provide health care to its citizens. The NHS or National Health Service was “established July 5, 1948,” following World War II. During that time period, there was a massive increase in patients suffering illnesses, injury and in desperate need of different types of health services. The NHS sought to change the outlook of health care. “Health care was a right, …show more content…
In the old health system, general practitioners were available to workers on low pay for free but did not cover their families and “workers with a better standard of living or retired workers were also not covered.” “Hospital care was slow by today’s standards, and the length of stay being numbered in weeks.” This greatly decreased the availability of beds in a main health care facility. Voluntary hospitals were used to facilitate some patients which included veterans, the mentally ill and elderly. To fix the standards care for everyone across all area of health care the NHS distribute the financial burden. The National Health Service is “financed almost 100% from central taxation.” The amount of taxation was based on your how much you made, “The rich paid more than the poor for comparable benefits.” NHS overall benefited everyone, you could be referred to any hospital, see any doctor and “even people with temporary resident would be eligible for health
The history of the NHS from being chaotic to having an organised st ructure. The structure of the NHS is divided into local authority and social service, hospital services and general practitioners including specialist care. When the NHS was developed, there was no prediction of how much all the services would cost to run. The government introduced the first service charges for dentures in 1951and prescription and spectacle’s in 1952 this could have been due to everyone needing medical care at the same time. This also suggests that individuals health improved, likely to live longer and would need more services in the future which the government realised would be unrealistic to achieve. Even then, as it is currently, it remains difficult
The original ethos behind the NHS was the belief that, through the provision of universal and complete health care, free at the point of provision, the NHS would eliminate significant disease and thereby work itself out of a job. Clearly a naive view by today's standards, this ethic remains one of the problems of the NHS today: the electorate still believes that there is intrinsic value in a universal and complete NHS, although no-one can agree on exactly what constitutes 'complete' health care, and none can say what the actual benefit of attempting to provide this (rather than rationed care)...
“Socialized Medicine.” The term throws shivers through the American population. For some this brings great joy. They see a world where they can visit a doctor and get the medicine they need for little or no cost. Others, however, see a world of rationed care and long waits for procedures. “Socialism” is the term that bothers. It sticks deep in the American psyche, conjuring up images from the Russian Revolution and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In Animal Farm, the animals experience a very oppressive leader, and it represents the cruelty of the Stalin Regime. Some wonder where they might fall in the hierarchy of animals that Orwell laid out. In the current healthcare system “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others”. (Orwell) America is built on the assumption that “all men are created equal” but there is a hot debate about how that equal access to healthcare should look. Access to healthcare is a basic human right that provides economic benefits and makes for a more fair and just society.
The purpose of this essay is to introduce the history of the National Health Service (NHS) and how its formation derived from the early 1600s. It will analyse two current political issues that occur within the NHS, the postcode lottery and the reformation of the NHS, examining the positive and negative effects they have had. It will also discuss implications of regulations within professional practice and how they account for quality of care.
The NHS was then finalised during 1948, the main role of the NHS was to reduce health inequalities throughout Britain, so that everyone could be treated the same way, whatever their finance stability, job status and location. They believed that this programme should have reduced inequalities throughout Britain. It was created by Aneurin Bevan and Edwin Chadwick but it was successful until the Prime Minister at the time who was Margaret Thatcher accepted the Bill through Parliament. The NHS included the Public Health Acts such as maternal and child welfare, availability for beds in hospitals and General Doctors in local areas. The NHS also included things such as Vaccinations and Immunisations and social work skills such as home helps and also
Universal health care refers to any system of health care managed by the government. The health care system may cover different programs including government run hospitals and health organizations and programs targeted at providing health care. Many developed countries such as Canada and United Kingdom have embraced universal health care with the United States being the only exception. The present U.S health care system has often been considered inefficient in terms of cost control as millions of Americans remain uncovered. This has made it the subject of a heated debate characterized by people who argue that the country requires a kind of socialized system that will permit increased government participation. Others have tended to support privatized health care, or a combined model of private and universal health care that will permit private companies to offer health care for a specific fee. Universal healthcare has numerous advantages that remain hidden from society. First, the federal government can apply economies of scale in managing health facilities which would reduce health care expenses. Second, all unnecessary expenses would be eliminated by requiring all states to bring together all the insurance companies into a single entity whose mandate would be to provide health insurance to all people. Lastly, increased government participation will guarantee quality care, improve access to medical services and address critical problems relating to market failure.
Overtime, sociology has played an essential role in the aid of healthcare policies and procedures, along with playing a fundamental role in one’s understanding of health inequalities. This paper explores how sociology has played such a role in healthcare, whilst including discussions regarding the influence of social structures and inequalities in the health of an individual, their family and community, with the topic of health variations between social classes being the main focus of the discussion. A structured overview, review and evaluation of a specific health policy in the UK will also be provided within this paper. Sociology in healthcare. Sociology can be defined in a number of ways, due to its almost limitless scope (Denny, Earle,
Health care is an uprising issue today in the United States. I believe in order for health care or the medical field to succeed in the future that social contract should be enforced. By enforcing social contract, it will allow health care to be more efficient by allowing individuals to assume responsibility for their own healthy by having the ability to ensure health. According to The Enduring Democracy book, " from the philosophy of Jean- Jacques Rousseau, an agreement people make with one another to form a government and abide by its rules and laws, an in return the government promises to protect the people’s rights and welfare and promote their best interest"(Dautrich, 7). In other words, if people came to an agreement about health care being available for all American citizens, the government will uphold this idea and will make sure all American citizens have the right to health care.
The World Health Organization defines universal health care as, “ensuring that all people can use the promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services they need, of sufficient quality to be effective, while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardship.” This means that every citizen of a country will have access to health care; if someone cannot attain it themselves, then the government will provide it. This topic is controversial because the state provides health care funding for every citizen; it can easily be described as being socialistic. Also, without state provided care, every citizen may not have access to the level of care needed due to costs. This topic is especially relevant because thirty two of the thirty three developed nations have universal health care with the United States as the exception. However, recently the United States has adopted the Affordable Care Act, which possess traits of universal health care. Universal health care is not a good choice for society for three reasons. The first is that it lowers quality of care. Also, the whole system and the way it is set up could certainly be a burden on taxpayers and the government which could lead to some major debts. Third, it would be easy for people to abuse the system.
In countries that offer free health service for all its citizens, the program is funded with tax money. In some cases , this leads to higher the taxes in order to fund the system.
The NHS was founded on similar principles as Canada- universal, free to a point, equitable and paid by central funding (Grosios et al, 2010). Over the years, the NHS has seen numerous organizational and political changes, but still remains universal and offers care to people who need it and are not able to pay for it. The NHS is funded by national insurance contributions and taxes. The healthcare policy and healthcare delivery is a responsibility of the central government in England, whereas in Wales, Scotland and Northern Island it is the responsibility of the local governments. In the UK, the NHS is composed of two major sections- one which deals with policy, strategy and management and other section that deals with medical care; this department is further subdivided into community care, pharmacy, dentistry and general medical practice. In Britain there are many barriers in seeking specialty care; one has to see a general practitioner first, who is a gate keeper and decides on where and who gets specialty care. It can often take years to bypass this gatekeeper because there are very few specialists in the country. In the past two decades, there has been a major shift in funding moving away from central government to local counties. The UK healthcare center is facing cutbacks in funding and complaints of long waits to see surgeons and specialists is common.
In many other countries the health care is government controlled and all citizens are provided government assisted health care. Most systems over in Europe are indeed government controlled and are taxed my wages. The United States government does not pay for most of its citizens healthcare in contrast. If you are fournate enough to afford insurance it's usually through your employer. In comparssion almost all government operated insurances provide better care for babies and pregant mothers than the United States system of health care. The United States system are more flexible than government aided systems though.
The fact that the current government is privatising many health institutions has lead the British people into thinking that it is not doing enough to provide a sustainable and an efficient approach to many of the people who are dependent on the resources they imply within the health sector. Nursing staff as well as general practitioners have become
Health is one the most essential and controversial issues in Australia politics and in this case it leads to the conflict between the Commonwealth and the State government. The Primary Health Care Reform in Australia, Report to Support Australia's First National Primary Health Care Strategy 2009 report says the Australian health care system is multi-tiered and is comprised of organizations that are funded and organized by a range of different methods including Government (publicly funded) and Private Sector (privately funded). And the Commonwealth government is the major funders and therefore the National Health Reform Agreement (Council of Australian Governments, 2011) distributed the responsibility of health to the Commonwealth government whilst the State government dominates the major responsibility in health. While the State and Territory government are responsible for the hospitals, the Australian government is responsible for primary health care system. The responsibility for the Australian government include promoting equitable and timely access to GP and primary health care services, system management, policy and funding for GP and primary health care services and working with each State and Territory on system-wide policy and state-wide planning for GP (Department of Health, 2013, p. 2). Therefore their policy needs to be based on the assumption that it promotes equitable and timely access to GP. The co-payment contradicts the concept of 'equitable' since their impact varies amongst different groups. Moreover, Rainford (2014) suggests it creates extra $2 billion expenditure for the State government due to the shifts in demand for the hospital emergency department rather than visiting GP. Additionally,...
Social workers serve vulnerable populations. Social work as a profession offers numerous employment opportunities that allow one to work in a career field that encompasses one or more of the populations served that piques the social worker’s interest and passions.