Global Health Care

Unfortunately, beyond what I wrote about two weeks ago, not much information exists about the use of social networking websites in relation to health care around the world. As time goes on, I'm sure facebook and other similar sites will begin to be used for health care purposes, but the chances that it will spread to third world countries is slim, especially anytime in the near future. For this week's blog, instead of writing about social networking, I'm just going to discuss health care policies and systems that exist in other countries. Currently, as I'm sure everyone knows, health care reform is a major issue in the news currently and Obama's bill was just recently signed. Whether you or I agree with his ideas or not, one of his main selling points of the bill was always that so many other countries exist with government-run health care plans and it works out just fine. I decided to explore the health care systems that exist in other countries of the world and see if they are in fact as successful as Obama has claimed them to be. Some of the countries will have these government-run types of plans and others won't, but I think getting a broad range of systems is important in evaluating our current system and the direction our system is headed in due to this new bill.

My first area of focus will be South Africa, as it has been for a lot of my posts so far. In South Africa, there is a quickly growing private section of health care, and a larger public section that is offered to all citizens of South Africa automatically. The public system is incredibly crowded and does not have nearly enough resources to support the population that is using it, according to an article called Health Care in South Africa. In addition, the private area of health care only supports those people who can afford the plans, which tend to be the wealthier classes, health care professionals, and foreigners who want cheaper health care than provided in the United States. According to the same article, public health care serves about 80% of the population while private health care serves only about 20% of the population. Despite this split, most of the 40% spent on health care goes towards the private section. In addition, the public hospitals mostly only have primary care facilities and in order for people to see specialists, they must go to a private hospital which costs substantially more money. I find it interesting that the part of their system that is public is drowning because of the lack of health care professionals to serve the immense number of people utilizing the system. Personally, I feel that the same could ultimately happen in the United States with the new plan in place. There are only so many doctors and nurses, and many hospitals are already overcrowded and professionals are overworked. The bill just passed could result in more overcrowding and inadequate health care being offered just to pass through patients and keep the system moving.

The next country that I will discuss will be India. I've touched on different areas of their health care before, and it was apparent that they are more advanced than many people think they are when it comes to health care and technology. According to an article called Healthcare in India in the 1980s, India's health care system was mostly public and government-owned. Since then, private health care systems have taken over and almost all of the hospitals are privately owned. The hospitals in India are world-class and their medical education is strict and structured and much longer then American medical education. Many people don't know much about health care in India, but it seems that it is advanced and much more private that publicly owned. One of the major things about India health care that struck me as somewhat incredible is that there is little to no waiting time in corporate hospitals for surgeries. It says in the article mentioned above that there is usually an 8-10 day wait for elective procedures from the first contact made with an Indian hospital. This is unheard of in the United States, and I think that it speaks of their high quality of health care and high prevalence of medical professionals.

One more country that I want to touch on more briefly than some of the others is China. While China is a major world power and has a very different health care system from the United States, I don't feel the need to go into too much depth about their system in particular. One thing that I read that struck me as drastically different from any other health care system that I've read about is their complete lack of primary care doctors. According to an article called Healthcare in China even in large cities, there are no primary care doctors offices like you would see here in the United States. Therefore, all patients have to go into hospitals for any type of health concern, and therefore, the hospital in China are overcrowded and chaotic due to the immense population and the concentration of people in the cities. This difference is staggering to me, and I can't even fathom a world without primary care doctors to go to for physicals and check-ups. The article even mentions that there is nothing resembling a real structured appointment system, so people are just expected to show up to the hospitals and wait to be seen for whatever their ailment may be that day. I can't get over the picture in my head of an overpopulated city like Beijing waiting in line at a hospital for a prescription for something as simple as penicillin.

During the research that I conducted for this post, it struck me that often the more advanced health care systems are the ones that have become more and more private over the years. The public health care systems seem to exist and still be alive in countries that are still developing or struggling. The United States is making a transition slowly to public health care, and it leads me to wonder if this is really a step forward for the country as a whole or if it is in fact, a step back.