Health Care Services in the UK & the US

A COMPARATIVE PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS

This research compares the delivery of health care services in the United Kingdom and the United States. The delivery of health care services to elderly persons in the two countries is compared as a part of this policy analysis.

Health care services are delivered in the United Kingdom largely through the National Health Service (NHS) which was established in 1948 through implementation of the provisions of the National Health Service Act of 1946 (Ham, 1985, pp. 1516). The creation of the NHS was the culmination of studies of health care delivery in Britain than began in the 1920s and continued through the 1930s, when they were interrupted by the Second World War. With the election of a Labour government led by Clement Atlee in the Summer of 1945 (almost immediately following the defeat of Germany), the health care studies were renewed and intensified.

In the mid1940s, health care providers, social welfare activists, and the Labour government all agreed that the state of British health care was abominable (Ham, 1985, p. 15). All of these parties also agreed that effective correction of the problem required greater governmental participation. The disagreements concerned the character of governmental participation in the delivery of health care services. The British Medical Association favored an ins

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f this dreadful phenomenon. As costs associated with the delivery of health care services soared in the United States in the 1980s, third party funders, health care providers, and users of health care services sought to develop and implement procedures and programs that would either stabilize costs or reduce the rate of increase. Health care services funded by government received special scrutiny. None of the approaches thus far attempted has proven to be particularly successful. Approximately 60 percent of the American population is covered by private health care insurance programs (Congressional Budget Office, 1993, p. 15). Most of these programsthe very great majorityare either fully or partly funded by employers, while the remainder are funded fully by the covered individuals and families. For the remaining 40 percent of the population, the delivery of health care services is either funded by the federal government (for approximately 25 percent of the population, primarily through the Medicaid program), or by individuals and families in the financial position to pay for health care services at the time of delivery, or deferred. When all is said and done, approximately 12 percent of the country's population is withou
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Approximate Word count = 4183
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)

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