Norway's Healthcare

Norway

Norway is a country where everyone regardless of economic status has access to basic medical care. It is located in northern Europe and it borders the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean, it is also next to Sweden, Finland and Russia. According to Rolleiv Solholm report to The Norway Post in February 22 of this year, Norway’s population is 5,051,300 and a total land area of 386,958 km². Norway has been a political Constitutional State since 1814; it dissolved its union with Sweden in 1905 which then became a sovereign state. The country is governed by three tier parliamentary system: the national parliament, the city council and the municipal councils which are all popularly elected body.

Norway was poor country and the majority of the population lived in rural sparsely areas. In the middle part of the 19th century, the physician-population ratio was only 5000:1. At the turn of the 20th century was the beginning of an increase in public responsibility for health matters. The enactment of the Practitioners Act in 1912 provided everybody to have access to medical doctors’ services despite the individuals’ financial income. In 1967, the National Insurance Scheme or NIS was created and provided everyone a universal coverage for welfare services and expenses. After World War II, the hospital role was widened, growing provision in specialized services and growth in ambulatory care were observed. The hospital Act of 1969, introduced a unified system for all medical institution and making counties responsible for planning, building and managing hospitals in order to serve the population more responsibly. Recently, as of March 1, 2013 the Norwegian Institute of Public Health reported on its website that its people are living longer than ever where women average is about 83.5 years while men 79.0 years compared to 50 years in the 1800s and 75 years in 1980. The information added that it is due to improved medical treatment and amongst other things such as enhancement in living standards, better hygiene and nutrition and development of vaccines.

While Norwegian are benefitting living longer with low coast healthcare, in the United States it is a very different story that played out on television and prints every day. According to Dan Mangan of CNBC, bankruptcies resulting from unpaid medical bills will affect nearly 2 million people this year and even having health insurance doesn't buffer consumers against financial hardship. (Mangan 2013). The United States healthcare system is very complicated one. In the first few hundred years of United States history, medical access was inexpensive but inadequate. Then at the beginning of twentieth century medical technology progressed rapidly and expectation grew with them as well as medical cost. In Joseph S. Ross report to Einstein Quarterly, in around 1920s the American Medical Association (AMA) was opposed to any government insurance program