According to Liaropoulos and Goranitis (2015), “the economic crisis created unprecedented attention to issues of the health system sustainability in a rapidly developing world.”Discussions on sustainability entailed cost-effectiveness, quality of care and patient involvement (Liaropoulos & Goranitis, 2015). Therefore, the purpose of this research will be to understand the way health financing systems are vital for achieving universal health coverage. Shi and Singh (2018) indicate that most developed countries have national health insurance programs provided by the government. Since 1950, the US has evolved in its response to concerns about cost, access and quality to basic healthcare services (Shi & Singh, 2018). However, the government encounters challenges in expanding coverage to more people while containing overall costs and quality. After the Second World War, countries were recovering from the substantial losses encountered (Liaropoulos & Goranitis, 2015). Governments had to provide affordable health services due to public demand. The evolution of health services in the past seven decades reveals the need for financing sustainable healthcare.
Cai et al. (2020) indicate that national health expenditures in the US reached $3.6 trillion in 2018, which is equivalent to 17.7% of the GDP. Expenditures on public programs, private insurance for government employees and tax subsidies for private insurance companies accounted for 64% of the expenditure (Cai et al., 2020). This issue is correlated with the US being the only developed country that lacks a government-funded payment system (Cai et al., 2020). Therefore, most citizens are uninsured despite the tremendous resources dedicated to the healthcare sector (Cai et al., 2020). The advantages of this system include providing citizens with a variety of options when selecting their insurance provider. The major disadvantage is that most residents are either uninsured or underinsured. According to Cai et al. (2020), high costs are attributed to higher prices and administrative inefficiencies. As such, researching a single-payer financing system is essential to identify cost reductions and areas of improvement. Financing healthcare in the US must be done through a simple process as seen in other developed countries (Cai et al., 2020).
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References
Cai, C., Runte, J., Ostrer, I., Berry, K., Ponce, N., Rodriguez, M., & Bertozzi, S. (2020). Projected costs of single-payer healthcare financing in the United States: A systematic review of economic analyses. PLoS Medicine , 17(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1371 /journal.pmed.1003013
Liaropoulos, L., & Goranitis, I. (2015). Health care financing and the sustainability of health systems . International Journal for Equity in Health , 14(80), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-015-0208-5
Shi, L., & Singh, D. (2018). Essentials of the U.S. Health Care System (5th Ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
