Healthcare in the United Kingdom:

Healthcare in the United Kingdom:

Benefits and Criticisms

Locate and critique a website that focuses on international health issues or health issues in a first world country other than the U.S. What problems of health care quality, access, and cost does it discuss or address?

The website to be discussed in this question is the National Healthcare website for the United Kingdom, specifically England. According to this website, NHS Choices, there are various things to be addressed in relation to healthcare in this part of the U.K. The website thus provides the user with sections through which he or she may browse, and which include articles and advice on quitting smoking, details on services, costs and rights of citizens, as well as what do to when abroad, if a UK citizen, among other broad and detailed topics (NHS Choices, 1).

Despite being regarded as one of the best functioning systems in the whole of Europe and, some would argue, globally, the English system does face some problems. For one, healthcare in this country is no longer funded solely through public means, and for this reason, no longer seems to provide full healthcare, especially cost-free complex and expensive surgery or HIV / AIDS care. Furthermore, a patient will have to pay various fees for prescriptions. Needless to say, the public here is outraged at some of these costs, yet many are not surprised. And of course, despite these minor issues, the English system does function very well as a socialist, tax-based, healthcare system, for the most part. Indeed, despite the problems stated above, the system does not, in fact, according to the website, present major problems on healthcare quality, access and cost. The only problem one could see, as mentioned above, is that cost could start rising for more complex healthcare issues and, if not privately funded, quality in this regard could go down as well.

Questions 2:

Discuss how you would rate this country in health care quality, access, and cost. How do you think the U.S. compares to other first world countries?

I think, as mentioned above, that the U.K. is among those rare countries that have only minor problems with the healthcare system. Quality and cost do sometimes become issues, but access is never a problem and often times the latter issues will be resolved as well. Thus, if one looks at it this way, the public system seems to work here. Yet the English system in particular has received much criticism. This relates to the financial problems that the country is facing in the aftermath of the global economic crisis. Yet the country's ministers have assured that they "will not make the sick pay for Labour's debt crisis […] and ministers could not 'sit back' and put more taxpayers' money into an unreformed system" (Mulholland, 1). The fact that the country calls for reform is, thus, a sign of concern.