NURS 8100 Week 1 DQ

NURS 8100 Week 1 DQ

The United States of America’s (USA) healthcare system is among the most developed in the world. One of the most interesting features in the healthcare system in the USA is the focus on patient empowerment and rights. The USA’s healthcare system is patient-centered. It focuses primarily on ensuring that patients are empowered to play a proactive role in their care process. Patients also have the power to seek second opinions and complain about their dissatisfaction with their provided care (Kandharkar, 2021). Patient-centeredness has promoted the prioritization and protection of the patients’ rights, hence, my interest in the system.  

The second feature of the US’s healthcare system that is of my interest is enhanced access to care by patients. The healthcare system has been structured in a way that ensures that patients access all the care they need within a setting. Patients have easy access to general and specialized care within their hospitals (Amelung, 2019). The enhanced access to care promotes optimum care outcomes that include safety, quality, and efficiency, hence, my interest in the system.  

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is associated with some challenges. One of them relates to individual mandate and exchanges of health insurance, which have increased healthcare costs by patients. The mandate and health insurance exchanges require insurance payers to cover healthcare costs for preventive services. The insurance payers in turn raise insurance packages for such services, leading to high costs that patients incur in seeking their required preventive care. This challenge exemplifies the nature of the policy-making process where the adopted decisions may not protect the interests of the majority (Haeder, 2020; Sommers, 2020). It also demonstrates the complex nature of health reform in the USA since some of the policies affected negatively the population.  

References 

Amelung, V. E. (2019). Main Characteristics of the American Healthcare System. In V. E. Amelung (Ed.), Healthcare Management: Managed Care Organisations and Instruments (pp. 17–26). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-59568-8_2 

Haeder, S. F. (2020). Political Science and U.S. Health Policy in the Era of the Affordable Care Act. Policy Studies Journal, 48(S1), S14–S32. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12385 

Kandharkar, T. (2021). Determining the Optimal Healthcare System for America: Comparing the Current American and Universal Healthcare Systems [PhD Thesis]. 

Sommers, B. D. (2020). Health Insurance Coverage: What Comes After The ACA? Health Affairs, 39(3), 502–508. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.01416