Summary Of The Healing Of America

The Better the Health Care the Happier the People

Before reading the book The Healing of America by T.R. Reid, I was completely uneducated and unaware of the health care systems that other countries use all over the world. I had never really taken into consideration the millions of people in who have little or no health insurance at all and how much it effective them. Every country in the world devises its own set of arrangements for meeting the three basic goals of a health care system. These include keeping people healthy, treating the sick and protecting families against financial ruin from medical bills. There are four main models of health care systems that Reid describes in the book that include, the Bismarck model, Beveridge model,
Lord Willaim Beveridge was an aristocratic social reformer who inspired Britain’s National Health Service. This arrangement gives universal coverage to everyone with no bills involved. The proposition is that they believe nobody should ever have to pay a medical bill. There is no insurance premium to pay, no co-payment with virtually no fee at all. Whether one suffers from a mild cold or one receives a quadruple bypass from the nation’s top cardiac surgeon, there are still no fees involved. The doctor’s bills of every single person are paid by the government. People go literally their entire lives without ever having to pay a single doctor or hospital bill. Although this might sound like the perfect plan, in reality, people of this country are still paying these fees, for they pay through a series of network taxes that would essentially make Americans cringe. The sales tax in the United Kingdom runs from 15 to 17.5 percent. The citizens do not only have to pay a high sales tax, but also pay by waiting in lines for care. Reid mentions in the book how he sometimes would have to wait weeks to see specialists for specific injuries. My roommate’s father lived in Britain for 2 years and used this health care system. He suffered from major knee problems and was put on a waiting list for 6 whole months
Reid describes this system, or nonsystem to be brutally simple to understand. This model is used in many poor developing nations including much of Africa, South Africa, South Asia and India. Since there is little or no government money to pay for health care and there is no health insurance, only the rich, the military and sometimes other government employees get medical care. As for everybody else, they stay sick or even perish. In most African countries the bulk of public spending on health care whether foreign or domestic is aimed almost entirely at the lethal epidemic of HIV-AIDS. This causes insufficient funds left over to pay for treatment of all other diseases and accidents. Thus people have to pay for treatment themselves. In countries where hundreds of millions of people live in rural areas, a simple necessity such as water can be difficult to encounter. If people cannot even accommodate for water it is almost non realistic to think that these people can pay for a medical bill. It is very normal for these people to go their whole lives without ever seeing a doctor or receiving any type of medical attention. Most of these nations use traditional approached used by their ancestors, such as a local healer who might use herbal or spiritual techniques to cure someone. Patients usually pay by other services instead of currency that can include whatever he or she has of values. This can include