European lessons learned
Policymaking is a gradual and flexible process that can be borrowed from nations that have progressed with minimal obstacles. Policymakers can adopt the ideas of better health policies from nations abroad and incorporate such ideas into their own system. However, certain factors need to be considered before deciding on which nation to extract plans from; certain factors such as the population density and the government resources available for the national GDP translation. A country like the republic of china has had difficulty in attaining national insurance for her population. The mistakes made by other nation can serve as a lesson to a government which has not adopted a similar policy; such a government will be cautious in dealing with risky health policies (Barnett and Vornovitsky, 2016).
The National Health Service (NHS) was congressional-based with the aim of pooling funds from national resources to fund health services. On the other hand, national health insurance (NHI) was premium-based, is aimed at financing health services to every individual regardless of their earnings (wages). The program obtained its funds from premiums paid by citizens. The majority of the working class with higher incomes were the subject of exploitation (Uberoi, Finegold and Gee, 2016).
Congress should know that providing affordable health care to citizens who really want it is the most challenging thing. China’s problems lie with the lack of administrative reforms in the health care system. They are still using the old system in providing health care to its huge population.
Take a country like Singapore; health care services are nationally published, ranging from mild back pain to heart surgery so that the citizens can choose the best option. The publicity has enabled citizens to make prior preparations in terms of cost coverage. Such behavior should be considered in reforming the US health care system (Olfson et al., 2019).
References
Barnett, J. C., & Vornovitsky, M. S. (2016). Health insurance coverage in the United States: 2015. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
Uberoi, N., Finegold, K., & Gee, E. (2016). Health insurance coverage and the Affordable Care Act, 2010-2016. Washington (DC): Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
Olfson, M., Wall, M. M., Barry, C. L., Mauro, C., Feng, T., & Mojtabai, R. (2019). A National Survey of Trends in Health Insurance Coverage of Low-Income Adults Following Medicaid Expansion. Journal of general internal medicine, 1-3.