Comparing the U.S. Health Care System to Other Countries
The US health care system compares favorably to some other countries in terms of long-term costs but unfavorably to others in terms of quality of care. However, statistics about costs can be misleading because there are administrative costs and long-term care costs; there are also tax payer costs in countries like the UK and Japan, where health care has been nationalized. So household expenses may seem high in the US but in the UK they are also high if one takes into consideration how much they are taxed to pay for universal coverage. This paper will compare the health care systems of the US, UK, Japan, France and India to see how they well they stack up.

Coverage

Coverage in the US is both private and public. The government provides coverage for individuals through Medicare and Medicaid if they meet an age or income threshold. France is a mix of both public and private coverage but skews mainly towards public care with a universal system recently put in place. In India, it is primarily private, with only 20% of coverage coming from the government—so the opposite of in France (WHO, 2018).

In the UK, coverage is public, but individuals can pay out of pocket for private, home care. In Japan, it is the same situation with universal coverage and private coverage being an option.

Funding

In the US, funding comes from taxpayers who support Medicare and Medicaid, ut it also comes from private insurers, who are funded by individuals or by companies that incentivize employees by offering them health benefits—i.e., health insurance plans. In the UK, funding comes completely from taxpayers as in Japan, while in France it is mixed as in the US, and in India it is primarily from individuals with some government funding coming from taxpayers (WHO, 2018).

Costs

Costs can be divided into administrative and long-term care costs. The US has the highest administrative costs of care and the highest per person care (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 2019). However, in terms of long-term care costs, the US is among the lowest of developed nations, as Graph 1 below shows.. Long-term care costs are 8x higher in Japan per person, and 7.5x higher in the UK and France. India’s healthcare costs are very low in Western terms, but this is relative because for Indians, many of whom are impoverished by Western standards, healthcare costs are not cheap.

Graph 1. Healthcare costs of US compared to other countries (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 2019).

Providers

In the UK, even though care is nationalized, individuals can still shop around among providers. This is also the case in the US, though selection may not be as high as it used to be due to consolidations and mergers of firms. In Japan and France, there...…focuses on regulation, safety standards, and improving access to care. In India, the healthcare system is less robust because of the inconsistency of the national government to monitor and regulate healthcare throughout the diverse country, which was not united until the British made it so and now is less so (WHO, 2018).

System Weaknesses

The main system weakness is that administrative costs are so high in the US system that it often deters people from seeking care if they have a bad coverage plan or no coverage. Health care is too expensive across the board for low-income families to pay for it out of pocket—but if they are above the poverty threshold they cannot obtain government subsidized care. This represents a further complication because they are still too poor to afford care but do not meet the government’s definition of poverty (WHO, 2018). In England and Japan, the main weakness is the wait time for care as the universal care system can create long delays particularly for specialized services via the public system—which is why many turn to private care practice as an added expense if they can afford it; there care is much more quickly obtained and accessible. In France, it is a similar situation and in India the main weakness is the lack of development, the lack of integration and the lack of professional grade support networks.