Final

MHA 6360

Final Paper: Ideal U.S. Healthcare System

The United States (U.S.) healthcare system just went through a major reform in 2010. This new system, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), ensures that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Within the act, there are nine titles that address essential areas to improve. This law also requires all American citizens to have health insurance or they will be fined each year for not having insurance. In all, Americans are supposed to become more proactive about their health and take preventative measure to prevent any chronic diseases from occurring during their early years and even later years through this new law.

With that being said, this paper will focus on the holes in the U.S. healthcare system and take a look at other healthcare systems throughout the world to figure out what is being used in those systems that make them successful in order to apply similar methods to the U.S. Hopefully, when these methods or services are identified, they will be able to meet the needs of the American citizens and create affordable healthcare with smaller expenditures.

According to the World Health Report 2000 (p. 152-155), France, Italy, San Marino, Andorra, and Malta were the top five countries who had the best healthcare systems as far as their overall level of health, responsiveness, fairness in financial contributions, overall goal attainment, health expenditure per capita, and overall health system performance. The U.S. ranked 37th out of 191 countries. However, I want to look at individual countries that ranked number one in each of the individual measures. This will give more insight on how the U.S. can achieve those goals by following what each country has done to be ranked number one within those measures. By taking a closer look at these individual countries ranking at number one on individual measures may give some insight on what the U.S. could be doing better in their...