The Current Healthcare System
Healthcare is the general term used for the entire area of prevention, treatment and cure of sickness and disease using the facilities of medical professionals and resources. According to The World Health Organization, healthcare embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations. Any collective group of medical professionals and services dedicated to providing this would be termed a healthcare system.
The English speaking world used to call this subject just medicine or refer to it the health sector which basically meant the same but it was before the term health-care was coined. Most developed and even developing countries have a system of health care for all to cater for those who cannot pay. Of course the first country wide health care service begun in the United Kingdom in 1948 and was called The National Health Service being the first to be organized and funded by the government.
A system second to this, according to The WHO is the one initiated in Italy where a compulsory system of insurance which the government funds, but at a relatively low cost per individual, is used. Canada and Australia have both started similar systems and have been running since almost twenty and the 1970′s respectively both going by the name of Medicare. These systems are almost opposite to the systems currently provided in American and South Africa although there are huge changes taking place in the system used by South Africa. people who work in health care include all professionals whose job it is to preserve life, treat and cure sickness and try to better the health of people. The collective expression for this is the healthcare industry but the word industry may not necessarily be the best one to use.
Worldwide, over recent decades, there has been a huge increase in the amount of money spent on health care and it is now one of the fastest growing sectors in every developed country with an average cost of ten percent of the gross domestic product. The only world nation to differ is The United States with over 15 percent corresponding to figures published in 2003 but it is set to rise to almost twenty percent by the year 2016.
Presently in the America over one hundred eighty million citizens are looking for healthcare and it will be no surprise to learn that it is top of all concerns for those in and seeking employment. Many large companies in The United States are feeling the effects of these rises in health care provision and an extreme case was where the car giant General Motors was seriously considering bankruptcy because of it. In this example some hard Union negotiations, compromises and the closing down of their finance arm GMAC meant this action wasn’t required.
Workers in America place this as their number one priority when looking for a potential employer and often will move to a lower paid position just to better their medical care. The health of the individuals on this planet should be something that is established on prevention rather than cure, a case of being hands-on as opposed to reactive.
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