Health Care Policy

Health Care Policy

Introduction

Health care in the United States is different as compared to other developed nations. The United States takes a different direction by making a medical welfare system for the poor and the elderly and leaving the rest of the Health care system to supporting themselves. It spends approximately 35 billion per annum to provide medical care with uninsured residents. Another important fact is that around 41 million residents of United States, who lack health insurance, cost 130 billion per annum in lost productivity. This is causing a huge problem in the United States and changes can be made but it is up to the Government to make these changes. Health care economics and the service delivery system present many challenges for the consumer and practitioner alike, despite the availability of exceptional medical care (Gina, 2009).

It has an inefficient and expensive health care system, compared with other developed countries, with poor outcomes and many citizens who are denied access. Inefficiency is increased by the lack of an integrated system that could promote an optimal mix of personal medical care and population health measures. This paper advocates a health care system in which core medical benefits should be provided to every American irrespective of the work status and financial situation, while improving efficiency and reducing redundancy. In this paper we are going to discuss health care issue in United States. We will be discussing how health care is affected by government spending, social structure and behaviors. Further we will be discussing health care policy to overcome the issue.

Problem Statement

The United States has the most technologically intensive medical practice in the world. It also spends more than any other nation on medical care, but health outcomes in the United States are inferior to those in most other developed nations (Robert, 2006 ). This is one of the health care issues we are going to explore in this paper. The poor performance of a medical care system may be due to inadequate or inefficient allocation of income, resources, or adverse lifestyles. Also, from a general welfare perspective, individuals may be very satisfied with other aspects of the economy, but dissatisfied with aspects of the health economy. These tradeoffs may not be seen in opinion polls solely focusing on the health economy. These aspects should be considered when assessing the overall quality of healthcare systems.

Background

The prospect of health care policy in the United States is a daily topic in the media, part news, and part conjecture. While the outcome of the current debate about moving closer to universal coverage is unknown, we do know we've been down this road before, many times. We have chosen this issue because we think that this inefficiency, spending more with poorer results, stems partly from failure to provide effective access to health care to a substantial share of the population. Lack of access leads to wider disparities in health in the United States than are experienced by the populations of other developed nations ( ...