America's Healthcare: Is the Nhs the Answer?

America’s Healthcare: Is the NHS the Answer?

Most people have a naturalistic desire for leading a healthy and lengthy life. A life of wellness, however, is contingent on the quality of health care that a person receives during his or her lifetime. In the West, and particularly in the United States, a free-market enterprise has created a competition for quality healthcare services; of which the cost is variable to the increased demand. In the United States, the high cost for medical insurance thus creates a barrier to access quality healthcare leading many Americans to question its relativity to the healthcare systems in other economically prosperous nations. Often the healthcare model of the United States model is compared to that of Great Britain where many have observed that the cost-to-benefit ratio far surpasses that of the United States.

With the current economic recession in the United States, concerns over the rising cost of healthcare have taken a central position in the American public sphere; moreover, relative to the British model of healthcare, America’s healthcare is the costliest, and provides less coverage. The debate becomes whether or not the United States should adopt a socialist model of health care similar to the National Health System of Great Britain. We therefore comparatively analyze each system of healthcare by focusing on healthcare policies, quality of treatment, and coverage availability to identify the strengths or weaknesses of each model to understand better each system’s efficacy under in a free-market economy.

Health Care Policies

As with other countries in the world, United States health care policies establish the means for citizens to access health services. The major difference between the United States system of health care and that of the rest of the world - and particularly that of Great Britain - is rooted in the ideology of small government. The traditional view of limited power of government has divided the American health care system in two groups: federally funded public health insurance programs, and private health insurance groups. According to a 2011, Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S., survey, health care insurance in the United States was as follows: Medicare 13%, Medicaid 18%, employer sponsored insurance 49%, private-non-Groups 5%, and 16% of the population remained uninsured.

Kaiser Slides: Figures, tables, and more.” retrieve from The Henry I. Kaiser Family Foundation: “Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S., 2011” (19 October, 2012). KCMU/ Urban Institute analysis of 2012 ASEC Supplement to the CPS. http://facts.kff.org/chart.aspx?ch=477

Health Care Policies in the United States

The United States government funds two public health insurance programs