Access to health care in the United States of America

Access to Health Care in USA

This research paper focuses on the degree of accessibility to the health care services in the U.S.A. Accessibility refers to the ability of an individual to meet health care needs and to acquire the needed medical services on time. It then discusses the findings of the research. The suggestions for the elimination of the prevailing problems in the health care system are also given in the preceding paper.

Health Care: Access to Health Care in United States of America

To achieve a long-lasting life and to save oneself from major diseases it is important that people have an easy access to the medical and health care services. Access to the health care services means that individual gets timely health services to attain the best heath results. In other words it refers to the ability of an individual to meet health needs and to acquire the needed medical services on time. (Albert, 2009)

Access to the health care system can be analyzed by evaluating four areas; first is the coverage of health insurance, it is more likely that individuals who are medically insured will get easy and timely access to health care facilities. Second is the availability of services of the primary health care doctor, the individuals should have a usual and primary care doctor for regular checkups and maintenance of health. The third one is timely receipt of health care services and treatment, the individuals must be provided with quickly treatment and care after a need for the provision of health care facility has been identified. The last area is related to the number of doctors and other workers available to provide health and medical services. (Albert, 2009)

The United States of America's health care system is usually under debates, on one end are those who believe that this system is the finest in the world and the most easily accessible health care system around the globe, whereas, on the other hand there are those people and scholars who believe that the system is fragmented and has been converted into a privileged service. This set of argumentators debate that the access to the health care services is a basic right of each and every individual. But due the fragmentation and inefficiencies of the professionals and concerned authorities, the United States of America's health care system has been converted into a privileged service that is restricted only for the elite class of the society. (Albert, 2009)

Findings of the Paper

The major findings from the research was that the United States of America has well trained doctors and workforce to provide health care services, high quality health care is easily accessible as the patients do not have to wait for a long time to meet the doctor and to receive required care. But the cost of health care in America is very high, it has become the privileged service for rich people and thus the access of poor people to health care becomes inefficient, due to high cost American citizen's access to health care is becoming difficult and no matter if they are insured or not they are having trouble in getting medical services. The main solution to this problem is to implement a universal health care system and to eliminate the existing fragmented system.

Accessibility to United State of America's Health Care Services

Waiting Time Associated with the Access of Health Care

It has been reported by a number of studies that the United States of America has the most effective health care system and access to health care services is much easier in the United States of America as compared to other countries. In addition to that, a number of scholars, such as Scot, indicate that health insurance should not be used as a key criterion to access health care system instead a basic criteria that should be considered while evaluating the health care system is the time period for which the patients have to wait before meeting the doctor or the specialist. There are only three countries in the world where only 10% of patients wait for specialists for more than 2 months and the United States of America is among these three countries along with Germany and Switzerland. (Scott, 2012)

Costs Associated With Health Care System

According to numerous studies, in the United State of America's health care system, usually the patients directly make payments to the doctors in exchange of acquiring a health care service from that doctor. It has also been observed that the cost of health services, in the United States of America, is higher as compared to other countries and therefore; most of the people in America are covered by insurance policy but even it does not guarantee the timely accesses to health services. The biggest disadvantage of health care systems in the United States of America is the high cost of health care and high expenses of treatments. Due to multiple sources of funding the administrative cost of the medical system is high in the United States of America, thus the access to the health care system is not anymore right of all the individuals in the United States of America instead it has become a privileged service for those who are rich and can afford it. (Maryann, 2011)

As compared to the other developed countries in the world, the United States of America's medical care system is the most expensive one and the United States of America spends more percentage of GDP on health care in comparison to other developed countries such as Canada, UK or Germany. According to a study, about forty years ago the United States of America and Canada used to spend around 7% of their GDP on health care but this rate has increased gradually and in 1982s the United States of America was spending double digit percentage of GDP on health care. (Albert, 2009)

According to a 38 comparative studies survey that was conducted a few years ago, according to that survey 14 studies suggested that access to the health care system is better in Canada, 5 concluded that the health care system is better in the United States of America and the remaining 19 studies gave a somewhat mixed result. It was concluded that access to health care is better in Canada as compared to the United States of America, but we should keep in mind that the variables like drug consumption, smoking and gun crime are higher in the United States compared to Canada or other developed countries, therefore, such variables can have a negative impact on the performance and efficiency of health care system. (Albert, 2009)

In reference to the comparisons that has been made above, the figure 1 compares the Canada's and United States of America's expenditure on health care

(Maryann, 2011)

Figure 1: Public sector Health expenditures per capita, 2010. (Maryann, 2011)

Benefits Associated with the United States Health Care System

The various benefits that are associated with the United States of America's health and medical system which make this system effective and readily accessible. (Maryann, 2011) The major benefits are mentioned below:

• Individuals have freedom to choose the doctors from whom they want to receive the health care services.

• United States of America has advance and sophisticated technology that has been equipped especially for the provision of medical services.

• The United States of America has well trained doctors and workforce to provide health care services. (Maryann, 2011)

In addition to the above mentioned benefits, the United States of America has the best and the most innovative health treatment practices around the globe and the health care system of the United States of America is one of the most effective systems because the government provides insurance to underprivileged people and many programs have been launched to insure poor people and there are proper agencies, that monitor the quality of medical institutions, health practices and medical treatments. (Maria, 2012)

h) Lack of health care centers in rural areas

i) One of the main causes of inequalities in access to health care is the ethnic variety among the predominantly white medical doctors and minority ethnic patients.

The findings from the above research can be summed up as Health care system in the United States of America is inefficient and the access of poor citizens to the health care services is low due to the high costs that are being associated with them. The figure 2 and 3 compares the personal and the government expenditure on health care of the United States of America and other countries.

Figure 2: Government health care spending per person, 2010 (Maryann, 2011)

Figure 3: Private healthcare spending, 2010 (Maryann, 2011)

As it is evident from the above figures, both the personal and the government expenditure on the health care system are quite high as compared to the other countries in the world. (Maryann, 2011)

Suggestions

The United States of America is among the richest countries in the world but still around 50 million citizens are uninsured and this is a major problem faced by the United States of America. In order to address this problem, there is a need to drastically improve the Americans' access to health care services and this can be achieved by implementing a universal health care system for everyone, otherwise the United States of America health crisis will get worse. To implement a universal system the present bureaucratic system should be removed and a single agency should be created, which will be in charge of making policies and strategies regarding all the areas of the health care system. The taxpayers would finance this new system, The people and the corporations that fall into a higher tax group will be required to pay higher taxes whereas middle income Americans would have to pay a little tax rise. This system will be efficient and more cost effective for the government. (Phil, 2012)

According to a study that was conducted in the state of Connecticut in the year 1999, the cost of $2 billion would have been decreased if a universal health care system had been implemented because the universal system enables the government to reduce the administrative costs and medical related purchases such as purchasing of medicine or equipment can be done in bulk quantity. According to another study that was being conducted by the World Health study in 2000, a collective health care system in industrialized countries costs less than bureaucratic system. (Phil, 2012)

Conclusion

From the above analysis it is concluded that the United States of America has well trained doctors and workforce to provide health care services. But due to the high costs associated with the provision of health care services, it is nearly impossible for the poor people to get proper access to the health care system. Most of the studies have indicated that the health care system has become a privileged service for the elite class of the society. The government of the United States of America shall implement various strategies to convert the current bureaucratic system into a universal system so that the health care system of the United States of America can be made more cost effective and easily accessible.