Examining the Global Healthcare Crisis and the US Healthcare System

This report examines the global healthcare crisis, focusing on rising mortality rates, challenges in children's healthcare, and adult mortality. It then delves into the US healthcare system, highlighting issues such as elevated costs, lack of access to primary care, and the impact of these factors on mortality rates. The report discusses government initiatives like Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed at addressing these issues. It also identifies key aspects for reforming the US healthcare system, including health insurance coverage, cost reduction, quality improvement, and political sustainability. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of overcoming existing loopholes in the US healthcare system to ensure smooth operation and improved healthcare outcomes for all citizens. Desklib provides access to this and many other solved assignments for students.

Running head: GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
GLOBAL HEALTHCARE AND USA HEALTHCARE CRISIS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) (2016), the definition of health is
the state of physical and mental wellbeing that allows individuals live freely in their respective
environment and maintain harmony among the community. This definition determines that
health is not just a disease free body, but also a stress free mind that helps to achieve the long-
term results of healthcare institutes. Besides the healthcare techniques and interventions,
healthcare policies play pivotal role in disperse health interventions properly in the society
(Katon & Unützer, 2013). However, in this era, where every disease is curable, the global
healthcare is facing challenges such as quality crisis of America and lack of health professionals
in Malaysia (Youbg & Kroth, 2017). However, the challenges faced by global healthcare society
and local or state based healthcare societies are different. The global healthcare is concerned
about the disease transportation whereas; the local healthcare is suffering from shortage of staffs
and quality (Blumenthal & Dixon, 2012). The purpose of this assignment is to point out the
healthcare related loopholes in global as well as American healthcare society.
According to the World Health Organizational (2016) report, the current trends of global
healthcare is facing challenges regarding these three priority issues, which are increasing
mortality rate, survival of life in the first five years and widening gaps in the adult healthcare. the
global report of WHO determines that the risk of mortality is not just affecting the healthcare of
developing country where the mortality rate is 40% of total registered deaths but also in the
developed countries where the mortality rate is around 60%. Further, as there are more than 10.5
million children die every year around the world (World Health Organization, 2016). Therefore,
survival of children in the first 5 years is one of the main motives for the Global Healthcare
society. Poverty, socioeconomic status and availability of good nutritious food and medicines are
one of the social determinants of health in this region of the world where children are at higher

2GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
risk of dying. Similarly adult mortality rates has decreased since 2002 however, 45 million
deaths occurred in the year 2015 in which 70% of the deaths were due to violence war and traffic
accidents (Baker, 2014).
There are plenty of reasons for the Healthcare crisis occurred in the United States of
America. The primary reason was elevated healthcare related costs. As the cost of healthcare
started rising the federal budget disrupted and people having low socioeconomic status become
enable to access quality Healthcare as the Healthcare system costs where doubled compared to
any other developed country (World Health Organization, 2017). The cost of healthcare can be
estimated from the fact that American Healthcare sector contributed 3.2 trillion dollar or 18% of
the total US GDP. Secondly maximum of the people were unable to access primary healthcare,
as they are not covered with health insurance. Furthermore, maximum of the researchers
indicated that the Healthcare sector of USA spends billions of dollars on expensive care units,
which can be eliminated to provide ordinary Americans standard quality Healthcare (World
Health Organization, 2017). Researchers compared the overall mortality rate, infant mortality
rate and life expectancy and capital spending of Canada and USA and found that the annual per
capita spending of Canada is $3,000 less than that of the USA. Both the infant mortality rate and
overall mortality rate are lower than that of the USA (Nicolaidis et al., 2013). However, the
difference is between the single payer and multiple payer of Canada and USA respectively.
According to some researchers due to this strategy individuals having no insurance will not be
able to high quality Healthcare for any kind of health problem (World Health Organization,
2017).

3GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
The United States government to mend the gaps in the healthcare system has
implemented several ways such as launching Medicare system for all Americans. This system is
like single payers system of Canada according to which, the patient will be able to avail quality
healthcare from primary healthcare systems (Sheikh, Sood & Bates, 2015). The Medicare system
is useful in such crisis as the 98% of the premiums provided by the patient will be spend on the
medical treatment and only 2% will be the administrative cost. The Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (PPACA) 2012 is a similar Medicare facility in which the government
aimed to reduce the number of people, who were not insured in any kind of health insurance
policy and provided them with the ability to avail quality healthcare (Obama, 2016).
Furthermore, there are several other aspect of the healthcare crisis of the USA, such as
remuneration problems for healthcare experts, lab error victims and high rates of chronic
conditions. These all are interrelated to the fact that 44 million people are still not covered with
any health insurance leading to spread the infection in their respective communities.
Furthermore, this led to the fact that more than 25 percent of Americans did not visited
healthcare services due to the higher cost of healthcare and medicines (Lorenzoni, Belloni &
Sassi, 2014).
Focusing on the abovementioned facts, it is properly determined that to reform the USA
healthcare four aspects such as health insurance coverage, cost of healthcare, quality
improvement and political sustainability is important (Obama, 2016). For the first aspect, the
USA government has already started working on and through the implementation of Affordable
Care Act or ACA (2014); the government has provided healthcare coverage to more than 30
million people. However, the major factors that should be noticed that the healthcare insurance
premiums should be affordable and the government should clearly address the healthcare

4GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
provider networks to the people who are insured under such scheme so that while availing
healthcare, they do not have to face any inconvenience (Sommers et al., 2012). Furthermore, for
the second determinant in this quality healthcare improvement plan, the government should
focus on the cost cutting of the expensive healthcare system. However, the government should
provide proper remuneration to the healthcare workers as they can provide quality healthcare to
their patients and the shortage of healthcare professionals can be minimized. Furthermore,
introduction of case mix based management in the healthcare system and Activity based Funding
in the healthcare sector is important so that the hospital improves their healthcare quality to
shorten the staying of patients in the healthcare setting and gain access to huge incentive and
funding from the government (Anhang Price et al., 2014). On the other hand, the patient centered
outcomes research institute was developed by the USA government to increase the number of
researchers trying to introduce innovation and provided them with proper funding. However, in
spite of the benefits of the ACA, the absence of a stable and sustainable government made the act
face several oppositions. The common Americans were also not being able to trust the outcomes
of this act, as after the presidency of Barack Obama, the future of this act was faded. However,
these four aspects have the capability of reforming the state of the United States healthcare
system (Katon & Unützer, 2013).
In this current context of healthcare, the global and regional healthcare crisis should be
mentioned equally as the regional healthcare is a small section of the global healthcare concern.
Starting from elevated healthcare related cost to introduction of new and different diseases, each
nation is suffering from healthcare related issue and preparing plans to combat the concern.
Increased healthcare costs, less exposure of individuals to quality healthcare, absence of a stable
infrastructure and decreasing healthcare workers numbers are few of the healthcare related

5GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
concerns that the USA healthcare system is suffering from. Hence, to combat the issue, the
government of USA has introduced a healthcare insurance scheme under the Affordable Care
Act, Medicare that helps the population to come under medical coverage and avail healthcare
facilities without any hesitation. However, there are still few loopholes that has been mentioned
in the assignment should be overcome to make the USA healthcare system free from flaws and
operate smoothly.

6GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
References
Anhang Price, R., Elliott, M. N., Zaslavsky, A. M., Hays, R. D., Lehrman, W. G., Rybowski,
L., ... & Cleary, P. D. (2014). Examining the role of patient experience surveys in
measuring health care quality. Medical Care Research and Review, 71(5), 522-554.
Auerbach, D. I., Staiger, D. O., Muench, U., & Buerhaus, P. I. (2013). The nursing workforce in
an era of health care reform. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(16), 1470-1472.
Baker, M. S. (2014). Casualties of the global war on terror and their future impact on health care
and society: a looming public health crisis. Military medicine, 179(4), 348-355.
Blumenthal, D., & Dixon, J. (2012). Health-care reforms in the USA and England: areas for
useful learning. The Lancet, 380(9850), 1352-1357.
Katon, W. J., & Unützer, J. (2013). Health reform and the Affordable Care Act: the importance
of mental health treatment to achieving the triple aim. Journal of Psychosomatic
Research, 74(6), 533-537.
Lorenzoni, L., Belloni, A., & Sassi, F. (2014). Health-care expenditure and health policy in the
USA versus other high-spending OECD countries. The Lancet, 384(9937), 83-92.
Nicolaidis, C., Raymaker, D., McDonald, K., Dern, S., Boisclair, W. C., Ashkenazy, E., &
Baggs, A. (2013). Comparison of healthcare experiences in autistic and non-autistic
adults: a cross-sectional online survey facilitated by an academic-community
partnership. Journal of general internal medicine, 28(6), 761-769.

7GLOBAL HEALTHCARE CRISIS
Obama, B. (2016). United States health care reform: progress to date and next
steps. Jama, 316(5), 525-532.
Sheikh, A., Sood, H. S., & Bates, D. W. (2015). Leveraging health information technology to
achieve the “triple aim” of healthcare reform. Journal of the American Medical
Informatics Association, 22(4), 849-856.
Sommers, B. D., Buchmueller, T., Decker, S. L., Carey, C., & Kronick, R. (2012). The
Affordable Care Act has led to significant gains in health insurance and access to care for
young adults. Health affairs, 32(1), 165-174.
World Health Organization. (2014). Challenges facing the United States of America in
implementing universal coverage. Retrieved from
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-141762/en/.on 13th Feb 2018.
World Health Organization. (2016). Global Health: Today's Challenges. Retrieved from
http://www.who.int/whr/2003/en/Chapter1-en.pdf?ua=1. on 13th Feb 2018.
Young, K. M., & Kroth, P. J. (2017). Sultz & Young's Health Care USA, 9th Edn., pp. 23-41,
Jones & Bartlett Learning.