Global Health
Question 1and 2: Three Surprising Things About Global Health
It was surprising to realize that the healthcare system in the United States is very inefficient compared other developed countries such as the UK and Taiwan. The United States spends up to 17 percent of the GDP on health care, while Taiwan only spends 7 percent of its GDP on healthcare (CNN, 2013). The second shocking fact from the movie was that 5 percent of the American population accounts for 50% of the healthcare costs in the country (CNN, 2013). The third interesting fact was that the doctors and other health practitioners in America are paid higher wages compared to other countries that have relatively better healthcare systems. Despite the better pay for the doctors, there is still a deficit in the quality of health services offered.
Question 3: How the United States Compares to Other Nations in Healthcare
The impression held earlier was that the healthcare insurance program in the United States must be more efficient because of including private insurance companies in the process. The reality, however, is the reverse.
Question 4: suggestion to improve public health in United States
One of the ways in which America can increase the funds available for healthcare and improve the healthcare services is to either have the government as the sole insurer of all the citizens or mandate all the health insurance companies to merge and form one corporation. This is to reduce the administrative costs and streamline the process of providing healthcare services. The information and communications systems of the hospitals should also be upgraded to make service delivery smoother and have them recorded in real time.
Question 5: Options for Replacement in The Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act signed in by the Obama administration had the intention of covering all the American citizens (CNN, 2013). One of the provisions of Affordable Care Act involved having everyone insured failure to which they would incur a tax penalty. The replacement Act seeks to remove the tax penalty (Nuzum, Collins & Abrams, 2017). The Affordable Care Act prevented the insurance firms from charging higher rates for the sick, elderly, and females more than the other demographics. The replacement Act seeks to enable the insurance companies to charge the vulnerable groups higher premiums.
Reference
CNN. (2013). GPS Road Map for Saving Health Care. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/user10419951/review/58501126/adfe9cdd6a
Nuzum, R., Collins, S., & Abrams, M. (2017). How Would Repeal and Replace of the Affordable Care Act Affect Your State?. Commonwealthfund.org. Retrieved 24 September 2017, from http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/blog/2017/jul/repeal-and-replace-states