Global HealthCare: Core Differences

One of the main governmental concerns is the healthcare system, of course. It actually refers to any ruling government in any country of the world, be it the US, Canada or Australia. We are not going to go deeply in politics today. Our preliminary task is to highlight the main differences in the general approach and implementation of healthcare in some well-developed countries.

You are welcome to ask why we have not taken into consideration poor countries and their Health and Care issues. True, there are many poverty-rife countries and we will talk about it some other day. However, today our attention is grabbed by tragic misfortunes of Obamacare in the US and Australian-Canadian universal healthcare system variant.

HealthCare System Types

Upon the whole, any healthcare system has several initial aims:

• To keep the population healthy.
• Cure and treatment of sick people.
• Grant affordable medical bills.

Sounds good and pretty healthy, however, in reality implementation of these aims differs from country to country. In order to show how different the approach to healthcare is we have compared two types of healthcare systems:

Universal system. This type of healthcare is accepted in Canada, Australia and the UK. Of course, with some slight differences this system aims to provide the following:

• Equal access to medical services to all people within the country or universal health insurance coverage for all people. On practice this more than a humane principle is not implemented in full because of irregular distribution of funding;

• Affordable and, what is more important, quality medicines: for instance, Canadian Pharmacy products which are under severe regulation of corresponding bodies. Most products even rare ones are easy to find via Canadian medications online;

• Complexity of provided services including surgery and dentistry;

• High quality of provided services;

• Australia has stepped a bit further than Canada in the next point; it offers no downtime in services and treatment receiving. True, some provinces in Canada do have waiting lists and lines;

Hybrid system (the USA), or multi-payer system. This Health&Care system does not provide universal coverage for all patients and it is one of numerous flaws of it according to independent researches. The US spends more than any other country on its healthcare system, still what does this system actually offer?

• Health insurance is mixed: mostly private, so people have to spend much on expensive health insurance plans. Only some groups are granted with government health insurance coverage.

• Free choice of doctor and clinic as to patients’ preferences. One condition: paid healthcare coverage.

• Contemporary equipped hospitals and clinics, a number of research centers indulged in constant research and development of new drugs.

• Medicare and Medicaid health insurance plans for groups of people who cannot afford costly coverage.
In spite of implementation of Affordable Care Act aiming at providing patients with financial protection from too high medicals bills, the majority of Americans still consider their health system to be unmerciful in terms of insurance costs involved.

Finally, as a kind of bottom line under this comparison: Canada can be proud of the results its healthcare system provides. For example, average life expectancy is not less than 80 years. Besides, Canada has the lowest rates of infant mortality among other industrialized countries. We can compare and debate which system is more contemporary; still the main indicator is how this system works and what the results are.

article by www.healthandcaremall.net – Canadian Health Care Mall