Comparative Summary

Comparative Summary

The quality of care as well as the care people receive is affected by the way societies pay for health care and the amount of resources devoted to health. In most countries, health care is financed by an organization associated with the government or financed by the government itself (Finkler & Ward, 2006). The government or the organizations associated with the government pay for health care services using taxes collected from people in the communities. In some developed countries for example, if there is a single-payer system, then government will pay for care directly, whereas in the United States part of the health care system is market-based, which means a portion of the United States health care system is paid for by private entities such as individuals and employers (Finkler & Ward, 2006). Even in market-based systems, the government sometimes provides health care to vulnerable populations because these vulnerable populations are usually funded by Medicare. Vulnerable populations are classified as a group of people who are not incorporated into the health care system because of various reasons. Some reasons these groups may not be well integrated into the health care system may include, but are not limited to, health, economic, ethnic, geographic or cultural characteristics (Flaskerud & Winslow, 2010). Some examples of vulnerable populations include ethnic and racial minorities, the urban poor and rural, immigrants who are undocumented and individuals with multiple chronic conditions or disabilities (Flaskerud & Winslow, 2010). Government and market-based financing both offer different advantages and disadvantages in health care financing. All societies are faced with making choices between how to provide access to advanced health care as well as basic health care, how much to pay for health care and which innovations will be made available to patients (Gapenski, 2008).

There are many differences between for-profit, not-for-profit and government funded health care organizations. For-profit health care organizations generally focus on making money, while not-for-profit health care organizations primarily focus on its patients and the quality of care. For-profit health care organizations do not answer to the communities they serve; rather, they answer to investors (Gapenski, 2008). The profits that are generated through the organization does not go back into the community, the profits are usually paid out to investors. Not-for-profit and government health care organizations usually return its profits back into the community by putting money into new technology, programs, services and better care that meet the needs of the community (Gapenski, 2008). In for-profit health care investors are the organization’s top priorities, where as in not-for-profit health care the patients are the organization’s top priority (Smith & Wheeler, 2000). In not-for-profit