How Important Is Healthcare?
Health care, or healthcare, whichever expression you prefer, is the prevention, intervention and management of illness using the facilities offered by the medical, nursing and allied health professions. The World Health Organizations definition is a little different and refers more to the prevention of illness and facilities to promote this, in addition to treatment that should be available to a single person as well as a whole population. Working to together this way, the whole medical community would fall under the expression healthcare system.
Early before the phrase health care was common, the English speaking nations called it just plain medicine or more commonly the health sector but it still meant the provision of a health service to treat and cure sickness and disease. Most developed and even developing countries have a system of health care for all to cater for those who cannot pay. Of course the first country wide healthcare service begun in the UK in 1948 and was called The National Health Service being the first to be organized and funded by the 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 healthcare system in the world. Two other systems like that in Italy, both using the name Medicare, one in Australia and the other in Canada were started between the late 1960’s and the early 1980’s. Universal health care contrasts to the systems like healthcare in America or South Africa, though South Africa is one of the many nations attempting health care reform. people who work in healthcare include all professionals whose job it is to preserve life, treat and cure illness and try to improve 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.
Whether you use the phrase healthcare industry or not, it is still one of the fastest growing around the world with an average cost of 10 percent of gross domestic product it also plays a large part in the economy of any country. Although in 2003 the healthcare costs paid to across the entire healthcare system, consumed 15.3 percent of the GDP of America, the largest of any country in the world and is expected to reach almost twenty percent of GDP by 2016.
Currently in the The United States over one hundred eighty million citizens are looking for healthcare and it will be no surprise to learn that it is top of all concerns for those in and seeking employment. The costs of health care in The United States have risen so much that General Motors had looked at filing bankruptcy due to the increasing health care costs wearing down its auto manufacturing division. Luckily it didn’t happen after some concessions and compromises made with the unions but it does show how something like this can have an effect on even the largest of companies.
The American health care system costs a great deal to employers but it is the number one thing that potential workers look for in an employer and has seen many shifts in how individuals view working for any given company. Possibly it is time health care was looked at in a different way and perhaps called health preservation with an emphasis on fitness and health to ease the need for a top heavy healthcare system which is becoming a international issue.









