Health Care in the US and the UK - Essay Example

"Health Care in the US and the UK" is an important example of a paper on the health system.

Healthcare provision is one of the most important systems that an economy must ensure to its citizens. Due to improvements in almost every sector of the modern human society, a lot of emphases has been dedicated to the healthcare sector by both private and public initiatives to ensure human suffering caused by disease and ailments are reduced. Governments and civilizations have therefore invested a lot of resources to ensure a sustainable healthcare system. These systems are varied across world countries, depending on economic capacity and policy formulation. This discourse compares healthcare systems in the US and the UK to illustrate some of these differences.

Healthcare System in the United States

Healthcare spending in the United States is one of the greatest in the world with a budget amounting to an average of USD 2 trillion, representing about 15 percent of government expenditure. According to Chantrill (2011b), this figure is expected to rise past the 18 percent mark this year. Despite the huge spending, the US ranks poorly among the member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in terms of efficiency of the healthcare system. This poor ranking does not reflect the commitment of funding into the sector but on the policy framework with which the authorities in the US handle healthcare provision. Priorities in the management of the sector do not seem to favor a proportionate healthcare concern which aggravates healthcare system issues. Administration costs for instance make the largest share of the direct costs which makes healthcare provision very expensive for individuals and the government. The Online Nursing Practitioner (2010) reckons that there is a huge disparity between healthcare concerns and the provision instruments at hand in the US.

Healthcare System in the United Kingdom

The healthcare sector in the UK is one of the best systems in Europe and the world which is a reflection of about 8.5 percent of government spending Chantrill (2011a). The OECD average spending about the gross domestic product is even higher than the UK’s spending patterns on this sector, which makes the country to rank highly. On average, spending in the European Union is also higher by about one percent than that of the UK’s spending. Healthcare is independently run by each of the UK governments using an efficiency targeted system which enables the national government to control the industry. Administration costs and other direct healthcare costs are balanced to ensure that each of the UK citizens gets quality services from the industry.

Conclusion

As illustrated above, there is a difference in the spending observed in the two countries mainly due to the management of the healthcare industry in both countries. Perhaps one of the biggest differences in the management of the two countries’ healthcare provision is in public and private healthcare arrangements. In the UK, there is strict control of the healthcare sector by the public sector which covers a huge proportion of the industry unlike in the US where the public and private sectors play an almost similar role (Johnson, 2010). There is a better preference for realignment in the UK than in the US. Federal government involvement in the provision of healthcare is more direct than the UK’s arrangement which involves independent states’ contributions.