Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

National Health Services

The National Health Service (NHS) has been in existence for more than 55 years. Each successive government has tried to reform the system in order to make it more efficient and effective. The NHS is in crisis, and the crisis results from the extraordinary advances in medical science combined with expectations that the NHS will provide the finest health care anywhere û at no cost to the patient. This paper explores how rationing reduces the quality of health care, and the alternatives to rationing.

Quality, Health Care, Rationing, National Health Service, NIH, Rationing, Private health care providers, Managed Care, Commodity.

A little over 55 years ago, health care in the United Kingdom was a luxury that not everyone could afford. The need for free health care was widely recognized, but it was impossible to achieve without the support or resources of the state. The National Health Service (NHS) became reality on 5 July 1948. Poor people who previously may have gone without medical treatment had access to health care services.

The NHS is financed almost exclusively from taxation.á John Sussex in Research in Healthcare Financial Management explains that the NHS is largely tax-funded, with as much as ninety-eight percent of NHS operating costs being met through taxation and just two percent from charges on patients - mainly for prescription medicines and dental treatment. Sussex adds that NHS hospitals cannot go bankrupt. Ultimately the federal government is responsible for paying a hospital's debts. Financial problems in the NHS system have existed since its inception. Financial problems began to accelerate in the 1970s as patients came to expect more elaborate, sophisticated and expensive medical treatments (Sussex 59).

The NHS has a workforce of roughly one million people and a huge budget. It is sophisticated organization, capable of delivering state-of-the-art medical care using the latest in medical tech...

Page 1 of 6 Next >

More on National Health Services...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
National Health Services. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:18, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705973.html