World Health Care Information
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.
Articles
- U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services - US federal agency administering Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Provides information for health professionals, regional governments, and consumers.
