Body: Healthcare Policies & Insurance
US
The US healthcare system is focused on a mixed insurance system with both private and public insurance institution. The health insurance system also relies heavily on employment. It depends heavily on corporations and employees to be key sponsors for insurance. This has led to many companies going bust as they are unable to sustain the amount of funds required just to keep their employee’s insurance policies going. Insurance has become so profitable that there are more than a thousand private companies that want to share this very profitable business. These companies are also not regulated on a country level. The profit-targeting companies have also come up with many overlapping and unnecessary policies to fully utilize the loophole in the American healthcare system. These are all in addition to the public insurance policies such as Medicare: covers elders, disable and end stage renal diseases, and Medicaid: children, war veterans and self-employees. As of 2015, 15% of the population is without insurance; one of the major reason is due to the people not having sufficient knowledge on their eligibility.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) that was implemented in 2010 has made an impact in the healthcare system in the US. It has also drastically reduced the number of Americans that does not have paid insurance. In 2014, it has also imposed a tax penalty on companies of a certain size that does not provide insurance and individuals without existing personal insurance. This however has caused many small and medium-sized companies to go bust, benefiting only the major multi-corporation companies that are able to provide internal insurance. This has helped to reduce the number of people without ins...
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...e able to replicate. It is also not just a bed of roses in Singapore, there is still insufficient coverage for post-retirement healthcare. The system also gives great advantage to people with high income as the amount of money in the HSA is proportionate to the amount of money earned by an individual.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that in smaller nations like Singapore, it always for policies and the government to be able to efficiently change what needs to be improved upon. The strict rules, the mentality within the individuals and the structure of the nation also play a big part in the success of the Singapore healthcare system. In countries like the US, they should carry out policies on a state to state basis and cater to the different communities according to their needs. It is hard to impose a one-off solution to a play as diverse as the United States.
An analysis of the US and Canada’s systems reveals advantages and drawbacks within each structure. While it is apparent that both countries could benefit from the adoption of portions of the others system, Canada’s healthcare system offers several benefits over the US system.
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.
On a global scale, the United States is a relatively wealthy country of advanced industrialization. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is among the costliest, spending close to 18% of gross domestic product (GDP) towards funding healthcare (2011). No universal healthcare coverage is currently available. United States healthcare is currently funded through private, federal, state, and local sources. Coverage is provided privately and through the government and military. Nearly 85% of the U.S. population is covered to some extent, leaving a population of close to 48 million without any type of health insurance. Cost is the primary reason for lack of insurance and individuals foregoing medical care and use of prescription medications.
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.
Out of all the industrialized countries in the world, the United States is the only one that doesn’t have a universal health care plan (Yamin 1157). The current health care system in the United States relies on employer-sponsored insurance programs or purchase of individual insurance plans. Employer-sponsored coverage has dropped from roughly 80 percent in 1982 to a little over 60 percent in 2006 (Kinney 809). The government does provide...
In recent years, the number of Americans who are uninsured has reached over 45 million citizens, with millions more who only have the very basic of insurance, effectively under insured. With the growing budget cuts to medicaid and the decreasing amount of employers cutting back on their health insurance options, more and more americans are put into positions with poor health care or no access to it at all. At the heart of the issue stems two roots, one concerning the morality of universal health care and the other concerning the economic effects. Many believe that health care reform at a national level is impossible or impractical, and so for too long now our citizens have stood by as our flawed health-care system has transformed into an unfixable mess. The good that universal healthcare would bring to our nation far outweighs the bad, however, so, sooner rather than later, it is important for us to strive towards a society where all people have access to healthcare.
The U.S. healthcare system is very complex in structure hence it can be appraised with diverse perspectives. From one viewpoint it is described as the most unparalleled health care system in the world, what with the cutting-edge medical technology, the high quality human resources, and the constantly-modernized facilities that are symbolic of the system. This is in addition to the proliferation of innovations aimed at increasing life expectancy and enhancing the quality of life as well as diagnostic and treatment options. At the other extreme are the fair criticisms of the system as being fragmented, inefficient and costly. What are the problems with the U.S. healthcare system? These are the questions this opinion paper tries to propound.
The US health system has both considerable strengths and notable weaknesses. With a large and well-trained health workforce, access to a wide range of high-quality medical specialists as well as secondary and tertiary institutions, patient outcomes are among the best in the world. But the US also suffers from incomplete coverage of its population, and health expenditure levels per person far exceed all other countries. Poor measures on many objective and subjective indicators of quality and outcomes plague the US health care system. In addition, an unequal distribution of resources across the country and among different population groups results in poor access to care for many citizens. Efforts to provide comprehensive, national health insurance in the United States go back to the Great Depression, and nearly every president since Harry S. Truman has proposed some form of national health insurance.
The main advantage of the Affordable Care Act is that it lowers health care costs overall by making insurance affordable for more people. First, it wi...
A country’s health care system refers to all the institutions, programs, personnel, procedures, and the resources that are used to meet the health needs of its population. Health care systems vary from one country to another, depending on government policies and the health needs of the population. Besides, health care programs are flexible in the sense that they are tailored to meet health needs as they arise. Among the stakeholders in the formulation of a country’s health care system are governments, religious groups, non-governmental organizations, charity organizations, trade/labor unions, and interested individuals (Duckett, 2008). These entities formulate, implement, evaluate, and reform health services according to the needs of the sections of the population they target.
Healthcare is the maintenance or restoration of health by treatment from trained and licensed professionals (Webster). The American people faced many issues with the way the healthcare system is split up. There are four basic healthcare models the United States usescurrently. First, PBS describes that the Beveridge model, covered/ran by the government, through tax payments. This is the only model used in Great Britain but in America it only covers veterans and soldiers, in Great Britain everyone in the country has coverage by it . Another system model the US takes up is the Bismarck model,it helps people to buy their own health insurance through their employer (Healthcare Economist). Three main countries that use this model are Japan, Switzerland, and Germany whose ex-leader, Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck, created the Bismarck method of health care. Which not only covers 90% of their country but allowsthe rich 10% opt out (Reid&Palfreman). An Americans third model option takes of the ideas of both Beveridge and Bismarck and its name is the National Health Insurance (NHI), which Taiwan operates with. The NHI allows private providers to become a choice even though citizens. These four systems have been used for decades and President Obama has put a bill together to propose a change in America'shealthcare. The Affordable Care Act [Obamacare], will give coverage through employers, help people find their own insurance, or government coverage through Medicare for the elderly, and Medicaid for a 1/3 of others (KFF). Medicaid is offered for those with low income, but only states with governors and legislators who approve for this one actually benefit the KFF (Kaiser family foundation) explained. Those who don't have or want health insuranc...
To further understand the US healthcare system and put in context how health coverage is provided to its population it is important to compare the US health system to another country like the Netherlands. In the Netherlands healthcare coverage has been achieved through competitive insurance markets similar to the US and the Dutch government does not control prices, productive capacity or funds but instead only acts as a regulator (Daley & Gubb, 2011). In 2006 the Dutch government held healthcare reforms because the country faced an issue that was very similar to the US, in regards to healthcare coverage inequalities, the population was covered through private and public health insurance, with stable private health insurance for the wealthy and unstable public insurance which lacked patient focus and was inefficient in comparison (Daley & Gubb, 2011). Many factors called for healthcare reformation in the Netherlands like a disarranged structure that ineffectively controlled cream skimming, lack of competitive incentives that for insurance companies resulting in bad performance, and the rising premiums
With the United Nations listing health care as natural born right and the escalating cost of health care America has reached a debatable crisis. Even if you do have insurance it's a finical strain on most families.
This paper would seek to look at healthcare systems from a U.S perspective. Whileit may differ in the arrangement and the degree of overlappingthe components are the fundamental basis for every healthcare system whetherall aspects are consolidated by the government or privately run.
It is interesting with how different America’s health care is from everyone else in the world. Most are universal, required to have health care. We are trying to accomplish that in America, but many don’t like being taxed if they don’t have it. There definitely is a lot we can learn from other countries. Overall Switzerland has a great system set up, with the United Kingdom behind them. Japan is also on track. America is definitely trying to make head way, and eventually will. It all comes down to weighing what is most important, cost, quality, or access to health care.