HEALTHCARE IN UNITED STATES

Healthcare in the United States



Healthcare in the United States

People use health care services for many reasons: to cure illnesses and health conditions, to mend breaks and tears, to prevent or delay future health care problems, to reduce pain and increase quality of life, and sometimes merely to obtain information about their health status and prognosis. Health care utilization can be appropriate or inappropriate, of high or low quality, expensive or inexpensive.

The study of trends in health care utilization provides important information on these phenomena and may spotlight areas that may warrant future indepth studies because of potential disparities in access to, or quality of, care. Trends in utilization may also be used as the basis for projecting future health care needs, to forecast future health care expenditures, or as the basis for projecting increased personnel training or supply initiatives. The health care delivery system of today has undergone tremendous change, even over the relatively short period of the past decade. New and emerging technologies, including drugs, devices, procedures, tests, and imaging machinery, have changed patterns of care and sites where care is provided.

The growth in ambulatory surgery has been influenced by improvements in anesthesia and analgesia and by the development of noninvasive or minimally invasive techniques. Procedures that formerly required a few weeks of convalescence now require only a few days. New drugs can cure or lengthen the course of disease, although often at increased cost or increased utilization of medical practitioners needed to prescribe and monitor the effects of the medications.

Of course the banking, fiscal and economic crisis that took hold in 2007 has meant that cost control is vital for any health reform to succeed. As a result, Obama's plan will have to generate 'efficiency' in the US system (without cutting worthwhile benefits) over the coming years. Much remains to be done here, and a large research element funded in the plan seeks to learn more about health care networks, integrated reimbursement for care and more effective pharmaceutical purchasing.

The role of the federal government in the health care system is limited to the establishment of and compliance with the general principle of Medicare, partial funding of health programs, provinces or territories and other functions specified in the constitution of United States. One such feature is the direct medical care for exceptional groups of American citizens, which include veterans, Aboriginal Americans living in reserves, and military employees of the Royal American Mounted Police. Other functions are prevention and protection of public health and promoting healthy lifestyles.

United States's health system relies heavily on primary care physicians, who make up about 51% of all practicing physicians in United States. They are a transmission link between the patient and the formal health system, and control access to most specialists, hospital care, diagnostic tests and write down prescription for drugs. Such a family physician can be changed an unlimited number of times by the advice of friends or a change of ...