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Pros And Cons Of Universal Health Care System

By Juliette Cruz  :


Universal health care systems provide medical services to all citizens of a nation. Some countries that have this system include the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. The government funds such programs, with different countries having variations in structure and costs of such systems. There are various pros and cons of universal health care.

The access to medical services through this system is unlimited, everybody gets the same opportunities. There is no consideration of how well off an individual is, or their social status. As such, the barriers experienced in looking for quality treatment in the medical sector are broken. America is one of the industrialized nations that is yet to embrace the system.

The system is associated with increased efficiency that is not found in other systems. With the previous or ordinary programs, there is a lot of paperwork involved, forcing patients to do a lot of filling which leads to increased probability of errors. The universal system automates and standardizes medical records, which means such records can be accessed by all entities, insurers for instance, with ease.

In addition, the fully electronic system ascertains accuracy with which patients are served. As a result, doctors are able to make sober decisions as concerns their patients. The information they need is not just safely stored but is not also easily tampered with.

Affordability explains why most people would fall in love with the system. The premiums for healthcare are alarmingly high, which implies that most people may find insurance unaffordable. And with most employees with medical covers making them too expensive, most people opt not to pay for them. This is where the universal system comes in. It is affordable, mainly because it is usually managed by government agencies, a fact that lowers administration costs.

Well, all these benefits do not come without a few hitches. Since everyone is entitled to receive medical care, the number of patients remains very high. The increment of physicians is not proportional to this increase in patients, making it a big burden on the few physicians. The quality of services offered greatly declines. This may be coupled with long waits by patients to be attended to.

Funding may pose such a big challenge to implementation of such programs. The most used way of getting funds is through taxation. Taxes thus have to be increased to cater for the increased overall expenses. In instances when such tax increments are not enough or are not implemented, then such a government would have to find other ways of getting funds. The problem with this is that the government would find it hard prioritizing for other projects.

In looking at the pros and cons of universal health care it has to be considered that the system encourages lack of competition. With ordinary systems, people can always opt for different companies depending on how well they provide services. With this system, any competition is eliminated, bringing about laziness and contributing to poor quality. This can only be sorted out through development of a watchdog system.




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