Health Care

Health care, or healthcare, is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of health through services offered by the medical, dental, nursing, and allied health professions.

The organized provision of such services may constitute a health care system. This can include specific governmental organizations such as, in the UK, the National Health Service or a cooperation across the National Health Service and Social Services as in Shared Care.

Compulsory government funded health insurance with nominal fees can be provided, as in Italy. Other examples are Medicare in Australia, established in the 1970s by the Labor government, and by the same name Medicare in Canada was established between 1966 and 1984. Universal health care contrasts to the systems like health care in the United States.

A health care provider or health professional is an organization or person who delivers proper health care in a systematic way professionally to any individual in need of health care services. A health care provider could be government, the health care industry, a health care equipment company, an institution such as a hospital or medical laboratory, physicians, dentists, support staff, nurses, therapists, psychologists, pharmacists, chiropractors, and optometrists.

Social health insurance is where the whole population or most of the population is a member of a sickness insurance company. Most health services are provided by private enterprises which act as contractors, billing the government for patient care.

Australia and New Zealand both have publicly funded universal health care systems, alongside ancillary private health care and insurance.

All of Europe has publicly sponsored and regulated health care. Countries include Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

In the United States Medicare System, the United States Department of Health and Human Services is the executive department responsible for health. It is managed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a member of the Cabinet. Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. Health care costs more per person in the U.S. than in any other nation in the world. Current estimates put U.S. health care spending at approximately 15.2% of GDP.

Certain publicly-funded health care programs help to provide for the elderly, disabled, children, veterans, and the poor, and federal law mandates public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. U.S. government programs accounted for over 45% of health care expenditures, making the U.S. government the largest insurer in the nation.

Americans without health insurance coverage at some time during 2007 totaled about 15.3% of the population, or 45.7 million people. Health insurance costs are rising faster than wages or inflation, and medical causes were cited by about half of bankruptcy filers in the United States.

Further Information Regarding Health Care

Health Care System Understood by Less than Half of Medical Students
Less than half of graduating medical students in the U.S. say they received adequate training in understanding health care systems and the economics of practicing medicine, according to a study conducted by the University of Michigan Medical School.

An American's Experience with Canadian Health Care
Have you seen the ad of the Canadian woman who supposedly had to go to Minnesota to get "life saving brain surgery?" A Canadian news reporter did a superior job of fact checking than U.S. journalists, and discovered that the woman had a non-threatening cyst, not cancer. She was probably being appropriately managed in Canada's health care system. Yes, there are some wait times, but not for life-threatening conditions.

Problems with the Health Care System
Given the enormous amount of money that is spent on our health care system and the research that has gone into the various diseases we would be excused if we think that there should be able to trust our health care system to deliver quality health care. Sadly, our Western health care system falls well short of what is desired.

Medicaid and Medicare Difference
Just like there's confusion over the difference between SSDI and SSI, there's confusion over the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.

Paying Your Hospital Bill
Have you ever received a hospital bill and sat starting at the itemized statement with no idea what you were looking at? Not all of us are professional medical billers and can decipher these bills. Barring getting any medical billing training, here are some tips to help you stay on top of the medical billing process and keep your hospital costs in line.

Top Hospitals have 27 percent Lower Mortality
Hospitals are not created equally: Quality gap persists, resulting in 152,666 potentially preventable deaths between 2005 and 2007. Medicare patients treated at top-rated hospitals nationwide across the most common Medicare diagnoses and procedures are 27 percent less likely to die, on average, than those admitted to all other hospitals.

Affordable Healthcare Medical Discount Plans
Why is it that in a country as affluent as the USA citizens are struggling to afford such a basic necessity as proper healthcare for themselves and their families? Almost 50 million people including close to 9 million children have no health insurance coverage while 75 million are under insured.

Accessibility of Health Care in the United States
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have failed to find any reasonable solution to the biggest failure of the American Government (both under democrats and republicans) and to the American way of life.

Health Care System Issues
I don't know if you'd call it a pessimistic or optimistic or whatever type of attitude you want to look at it as, but I always knew as much as I was able to really touch people and help them and improve their quality of life. I kept seeing and thinking about focusing on how many millions of people in the world right now, especially in America, who are uninsured, and who are over-dependent on things like dangerous medications.

Barack Obamas Health Care Plan
Barack Obama's ambitious health care plan is fairly simple and straightforward. His plan seeks to dramatically and swiftly increase the number of people that have health insurance. He insists that this plan will save the typical American family approximately $2500 in annual costs.

Choosing the Right Health Care Plan
Many people need a health insurance plan, but don't know where to begin looking or feel that they can't afford it. The truth is that you can't afford not to have it. Here are some tips to find the health care plan that you and your family need.