For decades, the US healthcare system has been one of the most discussed topics among its residents. Researchers and governors put much time, money, and effort to introduce to the world the cure to various diseases. The ideal healthcare system would provide the same care for each world community resident. However, due to the development of capitalistic relations in the world, people vary significantly in terms of their financial and social advantage. Since many people now have poor access to healthcare, the notion of public health has become quite popular with US residents. Public health is a part of the healthcare system that deals primarily with preventative measures necessary to combat various diseases and epidemics (APHA, 2020). Modern public health establishments are now controlled by the country’s government.
Government taking control of the healthcare system is quite a controversial topic for discussion in the context of today’s world issues. As some people are deprived of proper medical care, they tend to blame the government for inappropriate interference in their lives. Moreover, they believe that a private healthcare structure would be better for the whole population. Frankly speaking, such a shift could be beneficial for the residents in terms of cost-efficiency and treatment quality.
Another crucial argument is the fact that private companies are destined to be customer-oriented, whereas the governmental healthcare system is quite apathetic towards the patient. According to the researches, in countries where both public and private healthcare facilities are widespread, people tend to benefit more from private healthcare (Neto et al., 2016). Although the aforementioned arguments make private medical treatment prevail the public one, there are still some significant benefits provided by the government.
The notion of health is nowadays one of the most discussed across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The emerged virus has made dozens of countries close their borders and declare long-term quarantines. Practically any case of pandemic is a stress for the healthcare system, as people are now losing money and other powerful resources. However, most importantly, there are hundreds of lives ruined by the disease. In such cases, public health facilities are crucial for disease prevention. Hence, the government now is of great importance for a number of reasons.
First of all, governmental public health facilities are open to many communication channels that could potentially help suppress pandemics. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides US residents with credible resources and establishments dealing with COVID-19 (CDC, 2020). Being a governmental organization, CDC tends to appear more reliable to the broad audience than any other private source. Secondly, public health structures, along with governmental healthcare facilities, can influence both educational and recreational establishments in case of epidemic expansion. Private healthcare, on the contrary, is not able to immediately shut down the places of mass gatherings like schools and shopping centers.
Taking everything into consideration, it can be concluded that both private and public approaches to healthcare are significant for the country’s residents. While the first approach is mostly focused on individual care, the latter concerns emergency situations on the national level. Hence, they can exist only in symbiosis without one system outweighing the other. Thus, in cases of regular check-ups and treatment, private healthcare tends to be more attentive towards the patients. Emergency cases, on the other hand, can only be managed with the help of governmental support.
References
Centers for Disease Control (CDC). (2020). Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Web.
Neto, F. L. D., Rosa, R., G., Duso, B. A., Haas, J. S., Savi, A., Cabral, C. R., Maccari, J. G., Oliveira, R. P., Antônio, A. C. P., Castro, P. C. S., & Teixeira, C. (2016). Public versus private healthcare systems following discharge from the ICU: A propensity score-matched comparison of outcomes. BioMed Research International. Web.
American Public Health Association (APHA). (2020). What is public health? Web.