Employer Sponsored insurance: In this program the employees receive the benefit of health insurance from their employers as a package. Both for-profit and for-non-profit companies plan for the insurance. It is financed by both employers and employees as the majority of the premium is paid by the employers and the reminder is paid by the employees. Different health insurance plans have different benefits. For example, some plans include the benefit of prescription drugs though other plans don’t include (Kao-Ping Chua, 2006). In 2004, 174 million people (59.
8% of the population) were targeted by this program. • Private non-group: It benefits the people who are self-employed or retired. It also takes in the people whose employer does not provide any facility of health insurance. The private insurance companies govern the plans. The finance comes from the individuals only. As the risk depends only on the health condition of the person so sometimes the person has to give unaffordable payment for the premium. A healthy person has low premium as he has low risk and a sick person has to pay more for the premium as the risk is high.
The benefits depend upon the particular health insurance plan. Financing of the US Healthcare System Financing of any healthcare system is based upon two methods: the collection of money and the reimbursement of money. In The US it is the joint venture of government and the private insurance companies. Both are known as ‘payers’. The US is a ‘multi-payer’ system (Kao-Ping Chua, 2006). 1) Individuals and Businesses: • Taxes: They both have to pay taxes to the government and also Medicare gets finance from employers and employees through payroll taxes.
• Premiums: employer based insurance get payment from the businesses for the premium • Direct-or-out-of-pocket payments: This is a co-payment to a provider. 2) Government: • Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP and VA: The government pays money to the providers as reimbursement, which comes through taxes. • Public employees’ premium: The government pay the private insures also for the premium through taxes. • Tax subsidy: There is a tax-free reimbursement for the employees in health care insurance. The employees can also reduce the benefits for doing business
3) Private Insurers: Their sources of getting premium are businesses, government and the individuals. Alternatively, they give reimbursement to the providers. 4) Health Service Providers: Hospitals, health professionals, doctors all come in the category of providers and they get the reimbursement from the government and the private insurers for their services. Comparison of the US and Cuban Healthcare Systems The WHO report puts the US behind 36 countries in overall health performance whether it is adult mortality, infant mortality or life expectancy. The report says that Cuba has the better life expectancy than the US.
The US has higher chances of dying that is 140 per thousand instead of Cuba has the chances of 138 per thousand. The US expenditure per capita on healthcare system is $6000 per year, which is double in comparison of any other country. Whereas Cuba, which has ruined economy for the past ten years and is suffering from food shortages, drug shortages, severe unemployment plus spends as little as $185 per person on healthcare, possesses better mortality rates for infants and adults than the US and life expectancy almost equal to US (Blake Fleetwood, 2006).
As compare to US, Cuban healthcare system is considered more efficient. In this country every family has a family doctor and from Cuba many doctors go to other countries for rural health programs. Presently Cuba is concentrating on the sale of interest to big hotel companies for generating extra money for its national health care (Richard Curtis, 1994). The Cubans’ biomedical research department is the top most in the world. It is a polio free country. Each and every citizen of Cuba has been provided with education, pension and health care.
Cuba has the vaccine for meningitis B that US does not have. (Richard Curtis, 1994). In spite of having the shortage of medicines and money, this country provides its citizens excellent health care at lowest costs. Cuba makes a record in the patient representation at every stage and also in managing the system for health service. Many family doctors in Cuba have played a vital role to make Cuban healthcare system effective (Sarah Boseley, 2000). At the time of Fidel Castro Cuba’s mortality rate was same like other countries where the life expectancy of men was 48 and women’s 54.
Currently, it competes the US. Now the men life expectancy is 74 and women’s is 76. Here the infant mortality rate is 7. 1 per 100,000 births (Sarah Boseley, 2000). In Cuba there are three-storey buildings which are called consultorio where the ground floor is for the practice, the floor is for the doctors and the second floor is for the nurses. They have very less patients. There are 30,000 general practitioners. One every 500 to 700 people there is one family doctor. It has 37,000 nurses and 21 medical schools (Sarah Boseley, 2000).
On the other hand, in 2002, there were 2. 3 general practitioners and 7. 9 nurses on per 1000 population (Kao-Ping Chua, 2006). Due to the food shortage this country automatically has good health because food is allotted here and meat is insufficient so generally people eat fruits and vegetables. They have the shortage of public transport so many of them walk or cover the distance by cycle (Sarah Boseley, 2000). On the other hand people in US eat a lot and they don’t do much exercise.
It spends a little per capita on health care and to minimize the cost pressure less skillful doctors, nurses and pharmacists are hired (Holly Dressel, 2006). This paper reflects many complicated problems of US healthcare system. Some other problematic topics like predicament in nursing profession, quality of care, rejecting patients’ choices can not be avoided. Some health care experts suggest that Medicare can be extended as extremely successful program to overcome some of the problems.
There is a need of collective effort of policymakers and common people and to work mutually to beat these challenges (Ida Hellander and JoAnne Bailey, 2001). .
References:
Boseley, S. (2000, Oct. 2) Britain Studies Cuban Healthcare System, The Guardian (London), http://members. cruzio. com/~yogi/health. htm Chua, Kao-P. (2006), Overview of the US Healthcare System, www. amsa. org/uhc/HealthcareSystemOverview Curtis, R. (1994, Dec 10), Reflections on Cuba’s healthcare system- and ours, People’s Weekly world, p. 18 Dressel, H.
(2006), Has Canada Got the Cure? http://www. yesmagazine. com/article. asp Fleetwood, B. (2006, April 23) Cuba Has Better Medical Care than US, http://www. huffingtonpost. com/blake-fleetwood/cuba-has-better-medical-c_b_19664. html Hellander, I. and Bailey, J. (2001), The US Health care System: Best in the World, or Just the Most Expensive, The University of Maine Overview of the Uninsured in the United States: An Analysis of the 2005 Current Population Survey (2005), http://aspe. hhs. gov/health/reports/05/uninsured-cps/