Compare health care systems.?

Sonya Volcko: Sorry I don't know a great deal about health care in America.The National Health Service is the Labour party's finest achievement in the UK.People are taken care of from the cradle to the grave, free of charge at time of need. We are very proud of our health service and the dedicated people who work in it.

Lilli Kochel: No matter what propaganda you hear in the USA, the UK has a far better health system.Why do Americans allow greedy insurance companies to dictate their heath care needs? Why can insurance companies drop you when you become sick and can't make them money?I thank my lucky stars that I live in a civilised country that believes all its citizens deserve health care, if they can afford it or not.

Patrick Bitsui: Well, a detailed description of both systems, and the pros and cons of both, would require more than a paragrah or two (a lot more lol).But the big differences are......-In the US, health care is primarily delivered through the ! employer. An company/employer will get a group health care policy through an insurance company such as United Health or Blue Cross Blue Shield, and employees sign up. Medicare and Medicaid are government run programs for the very old and poor respectively. Due to Obamacare, as of 2014, nearly all Americans will be required to purchase health insurance. This will not affect (at least not directly), people who are currently insured through their employers. However, those individuals without health coverage will be required to purchae an individual health policy from an insurance provider, or pay a fine. This often times reffered to as an "individual mandate" to purchase health insurance. But despite these changes from Obamacare, the basic structure of health care in the US remains the same. Insurance will still primarily be delivered through employers, coupled with a large increase in the number of individuals holding individual health insurance policies. The biggest! pro of the US health system is the fact that, despite all the! complaints about uninsured people and lack of access for those who cant afford it, the level of care that one can obtain in the US is second to none (of course for those who have good insurance). It is no coincidence that people come from all over the world to US for care. Wait times for care and surgery in the US are better than the UK as well. The negatives are just as obvious. Despite Obamacare delivering care to just about everyone, it did little to control costs. The US spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other country, and it is growing at an unsustainable rate.-The UK is an example of a single payer health system. A single payer system means everyone is in one insurance pool, which is run by the government. It is paid for through tax revenue (which is why I dont't like the term free health care, because its not free, its just paid for differently than in a system kike the US). The big plus of a single payer system is that everyone has access to! health care, as well as having considerably better cost controls than healthcare in the US. Cons include more government control over healthcare, and allegations of rationing of care and longer wait times. The extent of rationing of care is debatable, and I dont have a good answer as to how much it affects overall care in the UK. But point being, in any kind of single payer system that is run by the government, rationing to some extent or another is unavoidable....Show more

Edmund Rappley: England has the ultimate single payer system. All doctors are employees of the state and everybody is fully covered by the state. The system of the United States consumes 17 percent of GDP with the worst results on average in the industrialized world. Every other industrial state pays less than 12 percent of GDP for better care.