The Health Systems Issues and Managements Research Paper - 1

The Health Systems Issues and Managements - Research Paper Example Developing countries are the worst hit with this problem. Most of them face challenges such as lack of enough health worker, little financing, poorly functioning information systems and lack of coordination between various agencies. The existence of these challenges in the health systems has been majorly blamed on their management. The managers have failed to tap the available resources and effectively use their management skills in planning and implementing interventions that reach all citizens. This paper identifies and analyses issues (challenges) that face the health systems and gives proposed strategies to be used in managing them. Developed countries such as the United States do not face serious challenges in their health systems as much as the developing countries. However, their health care concerns revolve around three major issues. These issues include cost, quality and access (Andersen, Rice and Kominski, 2007). In the United States of America, the cost of health care is v ery high and has become a leading issue for healthcare mangers. Since the United States moved from heavy-handed managed care, expenditures have quickly increased, and the number of people who are not insured has also increased. In fact, it is estimated that about forty seven million US citizens are not insured (AFL-CIO, 2011). In addition, the population that continues to increase every year has put a lot of pressure on Medicare. The crisis in state budget has forced nearly all states to make serious cutbacks in programs aimed at assisting the poor. These cutbacks have put America’s health care system in crisis since medical health care spending and the number of uninsured people in the country has increased (Trouth, Wagner, and Barrow, 2010). The rising cost of health care services in the United States has attracted a lot of concerns and featured in the news a lot. A large portion of the country’s resources is being spent on health care. The spending is not expected t o go down soon but is predicted to reach 21 percent of the GDP by 2016. With this high spending on healthcare, most US citizens are still not able to access quality healthcare. Over 46 million Americans are currently uninsured even though America’s expenditure on healthcare is the highest globally (Farrell, 2009). Healthcare accounts for more than USD 2 trillion in the United States annual expenditure. While this is the largest economic sector of the country, millions of citizens are not able to take care of their health needs and the situation is getting worse (Farrell, 2009). For the past nine years, insurance premiums have increased therby making health insurance unaffordable to many US citizens. The rapidly increasing medical bills are continuing to leave families in debt. In fact, according to the organization Health Care For All –California, about one-half of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills. With this huge number of uninsured individuals unable to access quality healthcare and costs continuing to increase, the healthcare system of United States of America seems to be collapsing. The healthcare system of the United States of America is financed by premiums paid for health insurance or from government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. The high numbers of people who are not insured in the country significantly increase the cost of healthcare. This is because health problems that