NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

National Health Care

National Health Care

Introduction

United States, one of the biggest economies in the world, is surprisingly not the healthiest economy. It faces a lot of health-related problems due to various reasons. Despite spending a considerable amount of money on the health care system, it is unable to provide basic health facilities to its citizens. They spend approximately two trillion dollars per year on health care; around one in every seven dollars in the economy, yet they are still one of the few nations where all citizens don't have medical coverage. Infant mortality status is a measure of how many children die before their first birthday. On this measure, the United States ranks 42nd in the world behind countries such as Cuba, Portugal, Finland, the Czech Republic and many others (Central Intelligence Agency, 2008). When measured on the average life span of its citizens, the United States was reported in 2006 at 78.0 years, the same as Cuba and Chile and behind countries such as Switzerland (82), Spain (81), Sweden (81), Canada (81), Singapore (80), and the United Kingdom (79).

Insurance of Health is an incentive mostly attached to the job of many Americans, or it comes as a result of the programs by the government such as Medicaid and Medicare but still many of the citizens of the US are deprived of insurance mainly because the insurance system is employee based. This means that the employee himself has to contribute for his insurance from his salary (Andersen, Et. al, 2007). Employees cannot afford the insurance costs and therefore, do not visit the doctors regularly or even when they are suffering from any illness.

Hospitals and Health Systems

The hospital system in the US is divided into Non-profit or for-profit organizations. As with other NGOs, this organization structure brings with it the facility for tax exemption and the responsibility to provide community benefit. Recent controversies in the hospital sector have questioned whether the levels of charity care, community benefit, and executive compensation provided by not-for-profit hospitals are consistent with mandates of their tax-exempt status and mission statements. In the United States, about 60% of hospitals are non government—owned nonprofit community hospitals (about 18% are for-profit corporate entities, and 22% are state and local government — owned hospitals). Along with the significant advantage to be found in tax-exempt status comes the demand that proportionate community benefit should be returned. While this is a basic and long-standing quid pro quo, the criteria by which community benefit is defined and measured have not yet been defined (Shi & Singh, 2009).Issues surrounding the US Health care

The healthcare system of the United States has a lot of issues. Many people agree that the issues should be addressed. Major issues that the country faces are as follows (5 Little-Known Giant Health Care Issues Facing the United States, 2011):

A huge number of Americans are uninsured which is why they neglect visits to the doctor. Due to initial costs and premiums people ignore insurance, but they suffer in the long ...