Healthcare System the Purpose a Health System

¶ … Healthcare System the purpose a health system support wellness prevent disease. What factors influence today's healthcare system? Describe U.S. Healthcare System context Patient Protection Affordable Healthcare Act.

Today's healthcare system is influenced by a large number of factors, a result of a complex environment and of several characteristics of the population. If one analyzes the utilization of healthcare services, this can increase or decrease depending on socio-economic status, physician supply, policy, risk behaviors and health status (Morreale, 1998). Many of these factors affect not only the utilization, but the nature of healthcare services, including their quality.

Muller (1986) pointed out that, from a socioeconomic perspective, education and income play an essential part. Individual with higher income and education tend to have lower degrees of disease and mortality. At the same time, however, this type of individuals have more visits to the doctor, appealing more often to healthcare services, although, most of the time, this occurs because with a preventive scope.

With this in mind, such conclusions can be mirrored on the nature of the U.S. population, dominated in the present by the baby boomers. The baby boomers represent a category of the population born after 1946. The baby boomers have several characteristics: they are approaching an age where they will increasingly look for healthcare services. They are also well educated and have higher levels of income.

Both of these characteristics tend to support the idea that baby boomers are likely to increase the use of the healthcare system in the future. It is more difficult, however, to judge whether or not this will increase costs or whether the impact will be disruptive. As previously mentioned, the baby boomers have significantly higher levels of income as well. It is to be assumed that they are willing and able to pay for the healthcare services they receive, either personally or through an advantageous insurance plan to which they have contributed over the years. As such, the cost of the healthcare services is not necessarily something that the system will need to support on its own.

The nature of the service is also worth an analysis. The fact that this is mostly a preventive service (at least while the baby boomers are still young) may decrease the costs over a longer period of time: it can be assumed that the baby boomers will decrease the use of healthcare systems at older ages, exactly because they have used the system from a preventive perspective and approach.

One of the great changes in the healthcare system is the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act of 2010. However, this act has been created to primarily look to citizens that were not part of any insurance schemes. This is not the case for elderly citizens and, as a consequence, not the case of baby boomers: as elderly citizens, baby boomers are covered by Medicare.