Health
Care Around the World
The
quality of care in other developed countries is comparable
with that in the United States-patients have access
to similar drugs, diagnostic tests, and other technology
for preventing, diagnosing, and treating disease. Patients
in Canada, the United Kingdom, Western Europe, and Japan
use primary care physicians for most health problems.
Patients are sent to specialists for more serious conditions,
and may receive care in hospitals and nursing homes.
The
major difference is in the way other developed countries
pay for health care. Private health insurance pays for
most care in the United States. About 90 percent of
Americans have private health insurance. Employers usually
pay a portion of the premium, or cost, as part of the
benefits provided to employees besides their salaries.
Most
European countries have a national health insurance
plan that provides free care. Taxes paid by citizens
pay the cost. In Canada, the central government and
the provinces share costs for medical care. Individuals
usually contribute a certain amount through payroll
deductions. The central government does not own most
health care facilities in these countries.
China
and other countries have a completely socialized health
care system. The government owns all health care facilities.
Physicians and other health care personnel are government
employees. The former Soviet Union established the world's
first socialized medical system in the 1920s. But Russia
and other independent republics, formed when the Soviet
Union broke up in 1990, are experimenting with private
health insurance and other financing methods.
Billions
of people in developing countries suffer greatly because
medical care is not readily available and is poor in
quality. Governments in many poor countries in sub-Saharan
Africa and Asia spend only a few dollars per person
on health care each year. Trained people, equipment,
and medicines needed to provide the most basic medical
care are in grave shortage. Families in these countries
typically earn only a few hundred dollars each year.
They must rely on the government, international aid
organizations, missions, or charities for health care.
Health
care personnel and facilities are not evenly distributed
among the world's population. Wealthy industrialized
countries have more physicians and hospital beds per
person than poorer developing countries. In the mid-1990s,
the United States had one physician for every 400 people
and Canada one per 454 persons. In comparison, the African
country of Malawi had one physician per 45,736 people;
Nigeria had one per 5,207 people; and India had one
physician per 2,459 people. Hospital facilities are
also distributed unequally. The United States has one
hospital bed for every 244 people compared with one
per 196 in Canada; one per 949 in Honduras; one per
1,252 in Haiti; and one per 1,270 in India. Major imbalances
in the amount of money spent on health care also exist.
The poorest developing countries spent less than $10
per person per year on health, compared to several thousand
per person in developed countries.
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