Essay Sample on American Healthcare: Lessons from Abroad to Improve Quality and Fairness

According to this documentary, correspondent T.R. Reid believes that the American healthcare system requires improvement. Still, there are many lessons that Great Britain, Japan, Taiwan, and Switzerland systems have to offer to make American healthcare better (Reid and Palfreman 2008). According to the World Health Organization, America's healthcare ranks thirty-seven based on quality and fairness. In America, healthcare can lead to bankruptcy, has long waiting times, but different people can point out similarities it has with developed systems.

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The Great Britain government owns the healthcare. They believe that one shouldn't pay for their medical bills, but the taxes are more than in America. Gatekeepers, like Ahmed Badat of Shepherds Bush Medical Center, link patients to doctors. Hospitals compete for government money even when they make no profit to remain relevant as Nigel Hawkes, an editor at The Times states.

Tokyo, with 130 million people, spend half as much as America spends on healthcare, 8% of the country's Gross Domestic Product, less than what Britain spends. Every citizen has a health policy, the government caters to the poor, and 80% of hospitals are private. The waiting time is around five minutes. Prices are fixed for all diagnoses, as explained by Prof. Naoki Ikegami, and hospitals adjust to working under the low budget, exposing them to a 50% financial deficit risk.

German uses Otto Von Bismarck's healthcare model, established in 1884, and the government covers citizen's healthcare needs via a national healthcare system, with 90% of citizens satisfied within it (Mehedi 2019). Waiting time is longer than it is in Japan, similar to that in America. A family doctor earns two-thirds of what they would make in America, but get free medical training and have a tenth of the overhead cost, compares to their American counterparts.

Taiwan's healthcare has one national insurance, as explained by Tsung Mei Cheng, a Taiwan American economist, who was adopted from about fifteen states and characterized by equal access, free choice of a doctor, and no waiting time.

Switzerland uses "The Sickness" attained after the 1994 reforms to make healthcare accessible. Everybody pays their insurance while the government caters to the poor. It is all about how much a citizen is willing to pay as Ruth, Fmr. Press. Swiss confederation explains.

This documentary is evident that even when changing the healthcare system of any state would a difficult task. There is a need for such an attempt in America. This would mean protecting what the citizens have to pay to access healthcare and, at the same time, sustainably standardize the practices within the system. There are similarities across all these states to America, and for that reason, following from what Taiwan did while developing its current system, there is a need to borrow proven components from other states when crafting America's healthcare system (Legido and Nolte 2008). One that guarantees the citizens that they would not run bankrupt even with or without employment. The amount of money spent on salaries, the government tax collected, and the choice of health insurance available to the public are factors to be considered to help balance the equation. In so doing, hundreds of Americans who have no access to quality healthcare would decrease.

References

Legido-Quigley, H., & Nolte, E. (2008). Assuring the quality of health care in the European Union: a case for action (No. 12). World Health Organization.

Mehedi Nizam, A. (2019). An Unconventional Way to Support Health Expenditure. An Unconventional Way to Support Health Expenditure (April 21, 2019).

Reid, T. R., & Palfreman, J. (2008, April 15). Sick Around The World. Retrieved March 14, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/sickaroundtheworld/