HEALTH CARE

Single Payer Health Care vs. Private Health Care

Single Payer Health Care vs. Private Health Care

Introduction

Single-payer health care is the financing of the costs of delivering universal health care for an entire population through a single insurance pool out of which costs are met. There may be many contributors to the single pool (insured persons, employers, government etc.)

Single-payer health insurance collects all medical fees and then pays for all services through a single government (or government-related) source. In wealthy nations, this kind of publicly-managed health insurance is typically extended to all citizens and legal residents.

Health care, or healthcare, is the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the medical, dental, complementary and alternative medicine, pharmaceutical, clinical sciences (in vitro diagnostics), nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”. The definition of health care is continuously evolving and varies significantly between different cultures.

Australia's Medicare, Canada's Medicare, the United Kingdom's National Health Service, and Taiwan's National Health Insurance are examples of single-payer universal health care systems. Medicare in the United States is an example of a single-payer system for a specified, limited group of persons within a country.

Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from private organizations (as is the case in Canada) or may own and employ healthcare resources and personnel (as is the case in the United Kingdom). The term single-payer thus only describes the funding mechanism—referring to health care being paid for by a single public body from a single fund and does not specify the type of delivery, or who doctors work for. Although the fund holder is usually the government, some forms of single-payer employ a public-private system.

Before the term health care became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease. The social and political issue of access to healthcare in the US has led to public debate and confusing use of terms such as "health care" (medical management of illness or disease), health insurance (reimbursement of health care costs), and the public health (the collective state and range of health in a population).( Asch, 2004, 940)

Discussion

Canada and Australia and most European countries have single-payer health insurance programs. These programs provide universal health care. The United States has U.S. Medicare but this system is only for senior citizens and some of the disabled. Government is increasingly involved in U.S. health care spending, paying about 45% of the $2.2 trillion the nation spent on individuals' medical care in 2004. However, studies have shown that the publicly-administered share of health spending in the U.S. is closer to 60%.

Single-payer healthcare may be operated in a number of ways. In some cases doctors may be employed, and hospitals run by, the government. This is the case in the United Kingdom, and is referred to in the US as ...