Comprehensive Essay: Universal Healthcare System in the USA

This essay provides an overview of the universal healthcare system, focusing on its implementation and impact within the United States. It introduces the concept as a system designed to offer quality medical services to all citizens, regardless of their financial capacity, with the government covering the costs. The essay explores the potential benefits, such as reduced overall medical costs through streamlined management and improved access to care, potentially leading to more funds for other development programs. It also addresses the limitations, including the high implementation costs and potential constraints on the quality of services due to budget limitations. The essay references several sources to support the arguments, concluding that while the universal healthcare system presents a better alternative for ensuring standardized medical care, its success hinges on addressing the discussed limitations.

Running head: UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM 1
Universal Healthcare System
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Institutional Affiliation

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UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
Introduction
Universal Healthcare is a system which is designed to provide quality medical services to all
citizens of the United States of America irrespective of their capacity to pay for the services. The
government caters for the total cost of healthcare provision (Jacobs & Skocpol 2015).
Body
The universal healthcare system reduces the overall medical cost which would be otherwise
be inflated by the private healthcare facilities. This is achieved through the removal of the
managerial cost of dealing with the private medical insurers as the doctors will only deal with
one government agency. Furthermore, the companies which provide healthcare will not have to
employ additional workforce to deal with different medical insurance companies hence saving on
cost, besides, the reduced competition among the companies will lead to the same normal service
at a low cost through limiting the special focus that the companies put on the wealthy people
(Chalkidou et al 2016). This results in an overall drop in the cost of medical care provision hence
the government can channel the funds to other development programs which benefit the citizens.
The system allows for free medical care provision, therefore allowing access to the services
offered at the facilities regardless of social status or the amount of wealth. Studies have shown
that precautionary care decreases the need for costly usage emergency room, before Obamacare,
46% of the emergency area patients went for the reason that they lacked a place to go. They

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rather used the emergency rooms as their primary care physician (Fredell, Kantarjian, Shih, Ho
& Mukherjee 2019). This brought about inequality as the poor could not afford such services.
However, the Universal healthcare system has several limitations which may, in turn, hinder
the successful implementation of the program. The cost of implementing and running the new
system is overwhelmingly high for the government and it may require special budgeting. For
example, Canada has a health care expenditure of 40% of its budget. In order to reduce expenses,
the USA administration may limit the services to be offered in the healthcare facilities. It could
prefer calming care over the expensive end-of-life-care. This may result in a low probability of
success of the system (Squires & Anderson 2015). The government may try to limit the amount
of their expenditure in order to cut low the cost of running the system, this may, in turn, lead to a
reduction in the quality of healthcare provided. The doctors will, therefore, have fewer incentives
for the provision of superiority care if they are not salaried well, they may devote less time per
patient in order to keep their cost low, furthermore, they will not be able to afford new life-
saving technologies due to inadequate funding.
Conclusion
The essay has covered the importance of having the universal healthcare system in the USA,
however, the new system has some limitations which must be addressed for it to be successful in
the provision of healthcare as discussed above. The universal healthcare system is considered a
better alternative in ensuring that all citizens access standardized medical care all over the
country.

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References
Chalkidou, K., Glassman, A., Marten, R., Vega, J., Teerawattananon, Y., Tritasavit, N., ... &
Culyer, A. J. (2016). Priority-setting for achieving universal health coverage. Bulletin of the
World Health Organization, 94(6), 462.
Fredell, M. N., Kantarjian, H. M., Shih, Y. C. T., Ho, V., & Mukherjee, B. (2019). How much of
US health care does spending provide direct care or benefit to patients? Cancer.
Jacobs, L., & Skocpol, T. (2015). Health care reform and American politics: What everyone
needs to know. Oxford University Press.
Squires, D., & Anderson, C. (2015). US health care from a global perspective: spending, use of
services, prices, and health in 13 countries. The Commonwealth Fund, 15(3), 1-16.