The U.S. Health Delivery System: Inefficient and Unfair to Children

1997 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 319-337
Author(s):  
Loretta M. Kopelman ◽  
Michael G. Palumbo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Health Care Resources ◽  
Health Delivery ◽  
Hip Replacements ◽  
The Many ◽  
Older Citizens

What proportion of health care resources should go to programs likely to benefit older citizens, such as treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and hip replacements, and what share should be given to programs likely to benefit the young, such as prenatal and neonatal care? What portion should go to rare but severe diseases that plague the few, or to common, easily correctable illnesses that afflict the many? What percentage of funds should go to research, rehabilitation or to intensive care? Many nations have made such hard choices about how to use their limited funds for health care by explicitly setting priorities based on their social commitments. In the United States, however, allocation of health care resources has largely been left to personal choice and market forces. Although the United States spends around 14% of its gross national product (GNP) on health care, the United States and South Africa are the only two industrialized countries that fail to provide citizens with universal access.

The English and Swedish Health Care Reforms

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Glennerster ◽  
Manos Matsaganis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Care Reforms ◽  
Swedish Health Care ◽  
Early Results ◽  
Access To Health ◽  
The World

England and Sweden have two of the most advanced systems of universal access to health care in the world. Both have begun major reforms based on similar principles. Universal access and finance from taxation are retained, but a measure of competition between providers of health care is introduced. The reforms therefore show a movement toward the kind of approach advocated by some in the United States. This article traces the origins and early results of the two countries' reform efforts.

scholarly journals Poliomyelitis: Eradication in sight

1992 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Large Majority ◽  
Paralytic Poliomyelitis ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Care Workers

Great strides have been made towards the control of poliomyelitis since the introduction of the two poliovaccines – inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), which was licensed in the United States in 1954, and live attenuated oral poliovaccine (OPV), in 1961. Today a large majority of physicians and other health–care workers in industrialized countries never see a patient with paralytic poliomyelitis. Unfortunately, this is far from the situation in many developing countries, particularly in tropical and subtropical climates, where hundreds of thousands of children still become paralysed victims, year in and year out.

scholarly journals Inequality Matters

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-154
Author(s):  
Mark Robert Rank ◽  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Heather E. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Policy Issues

Chapter 18 begins by examining how much economic inequality exists in the United States. With respect to both income and wealth inequality, the United States has the highest levels of inequality compared with other OECD countries. With respect to intergenerational economic mobility, the United States has less mobility than most other industrialized countries, with such mobility declining in recent decades. Greater levels of inequality are also associated with lower levels of mobility. Finally, high levels of inequality are correlated with increased violence, crime, and incarceration. The United States has been an outlier with respect to its failure to adequately address a wide variety of social policy issues, from child care, to criminal justice, to health care. Poverty is prime example of this failure and the predictable result of extremely high numbers of poor people.

Some technical considerations in planning for health

1972 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Draper
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
National Health Service ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Gross National Product ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Technical Considerations

Even in Western industrialized countries which have for several decades spent around 5 per cent of their Gross National Product on health care, interest in planning for health is recent. In countries like the United States, with what is sometimes described as a pluralist system, this is scarcely surprising. When the United States is described more bluntly, as it was for example by Walter Reuther, the incompatibility of planning with the general pattern of delivery is clear: ‘What we have, in fact, is a disorganized, disjointed, antiquated, obsolete, non-system of health care.’ But even in the United Kingdom with the framework for planning provided by the National Health Service, observers have been struck by the failure to develop an adequate planning mechanism in twenty years. This view has not been confined to foreign observers nor to British commentators outside the medical establishment.

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