Question

Please write a healthcare comparison review of the United States and two other countries. Explain the differences and similarities, and why or why not the opposing systems function better or worse.

Answer 1

The U.S. health care system is unique among advanced industrialized countries. The U.S. does not have a uniform health system, has no universal health care coverage, and only recently enacted legislation mandating healthcare coverage for almost everyone. Rather than operating a national health service, a single-payer national health insurance system, or a multi-payer universal health insurance fund, the U.S. health care system can best be described as a hybrid system. In 2014, 48 percent of U.S. health care spending came from private funds, with 28 percent coming from households and 20 percent coming from private businesses. The federal government accounted for 28 percent of spending while state and local governments accounted for 17 percent. Most health care, even if publicly financed, is delivered privately.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international forum committed to global development that brings together 34 member countries to compare and discuss government policy in order to “promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.The OECD countries are generally advanced or emerging economies. Of the member states, the U.S. and Mexican governments play the smallest role in overall financing of health care.However, public (i.e. government) spending on health care per capita in the U.S. is greater than all other OECD countries, except Norway and the Netherlands.

This seeming anomaly is attributable, in part, to the high cost of health care in the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. spends considerably more on health care than any other OECD country.The OECD found that in 2013, the U.S. spent $8,713 per person or 16.4 percent of its GDP on health care- far higher than the OECD average of 8.9 percent per person.Following the U.S. were the Netherlands, which allocated 11.1 percent of its GDP, then Switzerland also at 11.1 percent.

The United States stands at a crossroads as it struggles with how to pay for health care. The fee-for-service system, the dominant payment model in the U.S. and many other countries, is now widely recognized as perhaps the single biggest obstacle to improving health care delivery.

Although the nations all cover medically necessary and appropriate services, they also debate the limits of publicly defined coverage. In Canada, for example, home health care and drugs lie outside the public system. In France, dental and eye care tend to be covered by supplementary insurance. As medical innovation advances, discussion intensifies about how to define baskets of benefits that distinguish the responsibilities of the national community from those that individuals and families ought to bear personally. Although these deliberations steadily gain prominence and publicity, so far they proceed mainly at the margins of comprehensive systems that show little inclination to cut back covered services. The core values of these systems—solidarity, community, equity, dignity—remain intact and surprisingly little disturbed by rising costs and by gloomy forecasts that aging, technology, and the rest are rendering their systems un-affordable.

The moral and cultural foundations of universal coverage are missing in the United States, as the continuing presence of 40 million uninsured would seem to intimate. Circumstances are not propitious: 85% of the population has medical coverage, much of it funded by private employers; the 15% who lack insurance are not organized, cohesive, or politically active; sizable redistributive shifts by national design are not the political system’s strongest suit; and the right-of-center precincts in which that system has lingered for the past 35 years do nothing to ease the struggle. Equally important, Americans “know” that safety net providers care for people who lack coverage—a powerful inhibition to public action in a nation whose welfare state programs aim less at broad-ranging security in health and other policy spheres than at post factum compensation for those who fall through private-sector cracks. The brightest and best strategies to build a normative case for universal coverage have failed so far, and no one seems to know how to change these values, which are, by definition, fairly durable.

the national government sets a statutory framework for financing universal coverage. (In Canada the provinces must meet centrally defined conditions for participation in central/provincial fund-sharing arrangements.) How they raise these monies differs substantially, however: Great Britain’s National Health Service draws mainly on general revenues; 70% of Canada’s health bill comes from national and provincial general revenues; Germany relies primarily on work-based social insurance contributions; and—the most dramatic evolutionary development in this quartet—France increasingly supports its social insurance regime with general revenues that tap a broad range of wealth. None of these approaches is plainly superior to the others; they all “work,” and they all carry their burden of political and economic stress. France and Germany also have various degrees and types of cost sharing by patients.he good news for the United States is that in essence any major funding approach will serve. The bad news is that no such approach seems close to commanding consensus, and feuding over the merits of funding strategies aggravates the chronic righteous strife among proponents of reform that (given the imposing strength of the opposition) has heavily damaged reform prospects. One contingent contends that a “single payer” (general revenue—based) system is best. Another believes that the success of Social Security and Medicare validates a social insurance strategy. Whereas no other nation believes that universal coverage can be won and sustained without candid debate about taxes, a prominent American reform camp wants to build on the private employer contributions that buy most US health insurance today.

Where this self-denying activism, this stealthy state leadership, leads is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the present pattern—one step forward, one step back, and the nation counting itself lucky if the number of uninsured does not exceed 40 million—will persist. Perhaps incrementalism will proceed and the nation will awake one day to find that enough programmatic pieces are in place to sustain near universal coverage if only the money and leadership can be summoned to add a few more beneficiary categories and raise income thresholds a few more notches. Perhaps another 1932 or 1964 waits right around the corner, and “real” health reform may suddenly arrive on waves of social indignation and political innovation. At this point, however, cross-national learning disappears into the depths of national character.

Like these,there are so many differences among countries in reviewing health care comparisons.Just few differences I have provided to you.If you like my answer,please leave an up-vote.It is highly appreciated.Thanks in advance.