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A Short History Of Health Care |
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Written by Webmaster
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Monday, 12 January 2009 |
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By Kay Brown
 The sphere of medical care and the prevention, treatment and prevention of illness and disease is collectively known as healthcare. According to The WHO, healthcare embraces all the goods and services designed to encourage health, including preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations. Jointly, this provision of medical services would be known as a health care system.
Before the term health-care became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease. Most developed and even developing countries have a system of health care for all to cater for those who cannot pay. Established in 1948, The National Health Service in the United Kingdom was the world's first universal health care system provided by administration.
In Italy, they have a system that works by making everyone pay into a administration funded insurance scheme which The World Health Organization consider the second best health care system in the world. Other examples are Medicare in Australia, established in the 1970s by the Labor government, and by the same name
Medicare in Canada, established between almost twenty and 1984. The main nations that do not support this general health care service are America and South Africa, although they are making reforms to their health service. Individuals who work in healthcare include all professionals whose job it is to preserve life, treat and cure illness and try to better the health of people. The collective expression for this is the health care industry but the word industry may not necessarily be the best one to use.
Worldwide, over recent decades, there has been a huge increase in the amount of money spent on health care and it is now one of the fastest growing sectors in every developed country with an average cost of ten percent of the gross domestic product. Although in 2003 the health care costs paid to across the entire health care system, consumed 15.3 percent of the GDP of America, the biggest of any country in the world and is anticipated to reach almost twenty percent of GDP by 2016.
This is causing problems for large numbers of Americans with one hundred eighty million currently seeking adequate health care provision and it is also their single largest concern. A issue which came to a head when General Motors was seriously considering bankruptcy over the strain its health car plan was putting on the company. It was only after negotiations with the unions to reduce certain health benefits and the subsequent sell off of its poorly performing finance division that stopped the unthinkable from taking place.
In The United States, the prime worry of employees is their companies health care plans, even above their salaries, such is the importance placed on this progressively costly service. Possibly it is time health care was looked at in a different way and perhaps called health preservation with an accent on fitness and health to ease the need for a top heavy healthcare system which is becoming a international issue.
Please visit our site Health Care for more detailed information and videos and also Questions and Answers our main site on other topics.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 12 January 2009 )
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