Universal healthcare

Examples of Universal healthcare in the following topics:

• Public Assistance

  • Subsidies help to provide food, housing, education, healthcare, and financial support to individuals in need.
  • Universal healthcare: health care coverage that provides health care and financial protection to all citizens.

• Different Health Care Systems Around the World

  • The most notable difference between these systems is that the US is that, of these countries, the US is the only country without universal healthcare.
  • Healthcare spending per capita is on the left y-axis and life expectancy is on the right.
  • This graph demonstrates the apparent correlation between beds (per 1000 people) and the costs involved in healthcare overall.

• Improving Education and Health Outcomes

  • A country can impact its long-term growth by affecting human capital through education and healthcare investments.
  • In this field, economists study the function of healthcare systems and public health-affecting behaviors.
  • Health policies are the decisions, plans, and actions that are undertaken in a country to achieve specific healthcare goals.
  • Furthermore, healthcare can constitute a large part of a country's expenditures.
  • Analyze the long-run implications on growth from education and healthcare policies

• Externalities in the Health Care Market

  • Taxpayers should also be concerned with the state of the healthcare system not only because they pay for Medicare and Medicaid, but also because healthcare is a huge part of the US economy.
  • In 2011, the US spent 17.2% of GDP on healthcare, more than any other country.

• Defining Health, Health Care, and Medical Care

  • Overall, this system of healthcare in the U.S. is quite convoluted.
  • Considering the consequences, healthcare services often fall outside of standard macroeconomic concepts, defying supply and demand frameworks due to the nature of the business (i.e. life and death, the well-being of people).
  • This underlines a social issue: how can we improve healthcare economics to maximize value and minimize costs?
  • List the parties involved in the healthcare system in the United States

• Where a Dollar Spent on Health Care Goes: Introducing the Inputs to Health Care

  • Healthcare has many inputs and a wide variety of interested parties profiteering.
  • Understanding what drives the need for health care (and what prevents it), what is included in the cost, and the overall accessibility of this essential service is critical to understanding economics issues in healthcare.
  • The U.S. employs medicaid and medicare to provide for low-income and elderly citizens that would otherwise be excluded from the market, while other countries have healthcare systems with more government intervention to address market failure.
  • Discuss the factors that affect the cost of and access to healthcare

• Current Issues in Health Care

  • This legislation was designed to respond to many flaws in the current U.S. system of healthcare.
  • Healthcare has a demand curve that fluctuates wildly based upon the extent of the issue - consumers who are facing serious health problems will likely demand healthcare at almost any price, allowing medical providers to take advantage of the inelastic demand.
  • Explain the main parts of the Affordable Care Act and the current American healthcare system

• References

  • General Editor, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1995.
  • Dictionary of the History of Science, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1981.
  • The Logic of Economic Discovery, New York University Press: NY, 1986.
  • The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics, Cambridge University Press, 1992
  • If You're So Smart, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990.

• Causes of Market Failure

  • For example, education, healthcare, and sports centers are considered merit goods.

• Measurement Problems

  • Finally, it is also important to consider less quantitative components that affect the standard of living (for example, education quality, roads, access to public transportation, access to healthcare, etc.), and thus country to country comparisons are somewhat reduced in value.