Health Care System of the USA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Health Care System of the USA - Essay Example The healthcare system is a blend of public and private funding. Unlike US, in the UK, all residents are entitled to cover under UK National Health Service (NHS). Though the parameters of the NHS are not clearly defined, the National Health Service Act 1977 places a general responsibility on the Secretary of State to provide services "to such extent, as he considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements". However, the U.S. health system has some major public funded elements. Apart from having public hospitals in older cities, a policy called Medicare gives taxation-financed coverage for the elderly and disabled, mostly to people over the age of 65 years. Privately owned hospitals or physicians in private practice generally provide another utility called Medicaid. Being a federal and state initiative, the program provides coverage to people with low-income and disabled persons. In order to be eligible for Medicare, individuals or their spouses should have worked for at least 10 years in institutions which are covered by Medicare and are at least 65 years old and are a citizen or permanent resident of the United States of America. People under the per-requisite age can also be covered provided they are disabled or have end stage renal disease. In such cases, the people concerned should be receiving handicap benefits from either Social Security or the Railroad Retirement Board for at least 24 months before automatic enrolment occurs. USA also has another important public initiative called The Department of Veterans Affairs. This caters to providing exclusive health care to military personals. This includes medical coverage to injured U.S. military veterans and also to contemporary servicemen and women. Interestingly, the policy does not cover the health sectors of those veterans who are non-injured. The policy operates through a nation-wide network of government hospitals. Then there is something called the Home health care services. These are usually confined to nursing enterprises, and work on the advice of physicians. In the private sector, medical care is provided by personal physicians (doctors who specialise subjects such as internal medicine, family medicine, and paediatrics medicine), physicians who are specialists (such as neurologists, gastroenterologists, urologists, cardiologists, or paediatric endocrinologists) or non-physicians (people practising nursing and those who train for physician assistants like radiologists). Hospitals in the private sector include ones run by private corporations. On the other hand, county governments, state governments, religious orders, or independent non-profit organisations generally run the social or the non-profit hospitals. Apart from this, there are also hospitals that provide outpatient care in their emergency rooms and speciality clinics (like Surgicenters). However, these hospitals primarily provide inpatient care. The government also subsidises rates for terminally ill patients. The prenatal clinics, family planning counselling, and dysplasia clinics are government-funded and are usually staffed by nurse practitioners. On a comparative ground, the US has the most expensive health care system in the world. The