A universal health system that best suits the citizens or residents of a nation should mainly address the issues of affordability and accessibility. The most effective health care should be the one that government subsidize medical costs by 80% for self-reliant residents and applying complete waivers for unemployed ethnic minority, disabled, low-income, homeless residents and students. The government can achieve this by ensuring that the every resident must subscribe to a universal healthcare insurance program so that it can offer relative equality access. People who are self-employed and formally employed should be under social insurance program such that their firms and employers pay their insurance subscription. The insurance should cover 80% of the medical bills while the rest settled by individuals. The government should regulate the price of health care fees and make it standard and uniform within the country to avoid exploitation of patients, especially by private hospitals. The system should ensure that individuals access health clinics or hospitals of their choice and also entitled to quality healthcare services. The system should ensure that the underprivileged such as the people with disabilities, the elderly, and people with special needs are given first attention when they seek medical attention at various hospitals.
The health system will mostly favour the ethnic minority and people with disability through government subsidy. The system will help the ethnic minority by its affordability feature. Since often time, ethnic minorities face problems of income generation and unemployment, developing a healthcare system that fully waiver unemployed minority persons and subsidizes by 80% employed minority persons is a great benefit. The system will entirely waiver people living with disability from the insurance subscription thus allowing them to attain absolute free medical attention. The health system also ensures that people living with a disability are prioritized by health practitioners when seeking health services in hospitals or clinics.
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Japan’s Universal Healthcare is one of the most effective in the world. Japan established a universal health care system by introducing universal health insurance. Japan attained universal health insurance coverage in the year 1961 (MarcArthur, 2008). Universal health insurance coverage is mandatory for every citizen and residents of Japan, but there is no penalty for 10% of persons who do not wish to conform, making it somewhat optional practice. Individuals who are not insured will pay 100% of medical costs. Japan has eight health insurance systems which are categorized into two broad categories, employees’ health insurance and national health insurance. National health insurance covers students and self-employed persons while employees; health insurance covers corporate employees and employers. Employees who lose their jobs do not lose their health insurance coverage in Japan, unlike many OECD nations.
The government pays 70% of the medical bills as citizens accept 30% responsibility of the medical costs making the cost of health very cheap. The government of Japan creates a committee that regulates the cost of medical fees annually by applying nationwide uniform fee schedule for reimbursement (MarcArthur, 2008). Japanese patients are at liberty to choose physicians or facilities from public hospitals or private hospitals and patients also have universal access to any facility often without reservations or appointments in the country even though patients without referrals may be charged more. MRIs and CT scans are the most favoured medical technology in Japan and many instances there are no longer waiting line and hours compared to other OECD countries like the UK. Lesser waiting time is attributed to a number of health clinics per capita than the UK or Germany.
The main advantage of the Japanese universal healthcare system is that it is affordable and accessible to all residents. Besides, there is a short waiting line. The main disadvantage of Japanese universal health care system is the problem Japan has with paying for the rising medical costs a situation that made many hospitals lose much money (MarcArthur, 2008). The problem has proven a burden to each of the country's health insurance systems. The cheap cost medical services have also led to an influx of patients visiting hospitals for relatively trivial problems which in turn has made them given less attention.
References
The Sick Around the World video By MacArthur 4/15/2008) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/sickaroundtheworld/
