Public Health Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Public Health - Essay Example There is no country in the world, which has a perfect system (Barker, 2009, p. 89). The American health care system has a decentralized system of financing and ownership. Currently, it is seeking to reform its financing and delivery system. In order to accomplish its reforms, it needs a concerted effort from the federal government along with considerable help from the private health care sector (Burns, 2014, p. 8). Financing health care is a tension among the ethics and values we place on human life. The implication is that the health care system would fail if completely governed by market forces, even though the health care system exists within a general market economy. At some level, health care competes for resources with production of food, production of movies and construction of homes and other numerous goods and services consumed by over 300 million people in a nation (Jonas, Goldsteen, Goldsteen & Jonas, 2013, p. 142). The public financing for the American health care system comes from the state, local and the federal government. Public funding is accountable for more than half of the health care spending. It covers over 27 percent of the U.S population. This percentage includes the aged population, the disabled, the poor, war veterans, children, government employees and Native Americans (Smith, Wertheimer & Fincham, 2013, p. 23). The centre for Medicare and Medicaid compiles the national health expenditure estimating the annual health spending of the entire U.S population. This is done using source of funding for those services (Sundararaman, 2009, p. 8). Medicare financing comes from general revenues, beneficiary premiums and the payroll tax contributions. Medicaid is a partnership between the federal government and the state government to provide health benefits to the disabled and low-income persons. Apart from the Medicare and Medicaid, the U.S government also finances other