Financing of healthcare and healthcare delivery systems are popular topics of study across the world. This popularity is due to the universal human need for health care, and also due to the various means of the delivery systems and financing around the world. The many differences depend majorly on each country’s history, political culture, and the level of wealth (Grieves, 2000).
Healthcare, as a sensitive topic, has been politicized in many countries. This has in sooth impact society in a negative way especially people who have no access to healthcare. This paper compares the healthcare system of the United States to that of the United Kingdom. Despite the cultural proximity between the dual, health care within these two countries is distinct.
In June 2000, the World Health Organization released a report which ranked the health systems of 191 countries across the world. The United Kingdom was ranked 9th and the United States being ranked 17th highest in overall system performance (Blendon, 2001). According to a comparative study conducted in 2006 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the total health expenditure in 2004 by the UK was 8.3% of their gross domestic product (GDP) and the US was 15.3% of their GDP, whereas the average of all 30 countries was 8.9%. In the same study, the health care expenditure in the UK was US $2,546 per capita and US $6,102 per capita in the US, whereas the mean for the 30-countries was US $2,550 (Grieve, 2000, p.19).
In 2001, approximately 45 million people in America under the age of 65 lacked health insurance cover, with far more US citizens than UK citizens reporting that the cost of health care is a barrier to access. The UK provides universal health care that is free at point of service to its citizens; it is governed centrally with funding from taxes (James, 2004, p.33) Health-care system in the US is funded by a patchwork of both public and private insurance that attracts large point of service fees on many patients. Care is provided through nonprofit, public and private providers in a competitive delivery system which is mostly ungoverned.
Although the UK health care funding is government controlled and the US health care funding is mostly private controlled, both are only made possible by the contributions made by the citizens. The main differences are the level of government involvement and mandatory taxation versus voluntary contributions. US has continued to perform relatively well despite fiscal challenges in sustaining the health care system (Long, 1998, p.53).
In conclusion, despite the distinctions between the US and UK healthcare system, both countries face the same imperative, that is, to reduce the cost of delivering care to their aging populations while at the same time addressing deficiencies in the quality and safety of care. In the United States, health care consumes a large portion of the nation’s GDP and the system still fails to insure a sixth of the population (Long, 1998, p.51). However, like in the US, the UK government is making major efforts to reform the health care system: to respond to severe economic pressures, to improve the quality of care, and to decentralize and remove bureaucratic layers. It is therefore evident from this paper that there are distinctions between the US and UK healthcare systems.
References
Grieve, A., McCann, S., & MacTaggart, J. (2000). Health care in the United Kingdom. East Kilbride: Imprint Publishing Systems.
James, J., Wall, I., & Dean, P. (2004). Medicolegal essentials in healthcare (2nd ed.). London: Greenwich Medical Media.
Long, M. J. (1998). Health and healthcare in the United States. Chicago, Ill.: Health Administration Press.
