Research Assignment Paper on Health for Life

Health for Life
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United States healthcare system has what it takes to provide the best healthcare services to the Americans. Statistics indicate that U.S. spends the highest income per individual on health as compared to other industrialized nations. It has the best clinicians and the latest medical technology in the provision of healthcare services. However, it is sad that U.S. healthcare system is ranked the highest of all the industrialized countries concerning high rates of medical errors, high costs of medical care and inefficient coordination of medical care services. Besides, there are high numbers of uninsured citizens who do not access quality healthcare. Chronic illnesses are growing by the day, and they have not been adequately addressed by the U.S. healthcare system. U.S. healthcare also still experience high disparity in the provision of its services among people of different races, ethnic groups, and gender. These factors have had negative impacts on the entire healthcare system such as increased costs for medical healthcare and inadequate management for chronic illnesses as earlier highlighted. Nevertheless, nurses and other healthcare providers can still advocate for the improvement of healthcare through intensified use of research to guide treatment, enhancing measurement of performance to indicate opportunities for improvement, re-inventing care delivery, customizing care services.
Impact of Current Healthcare Issues on the Status of Public Healthcare
Currently, there are numerous issues affecting the U.S. healthcare system. These are escalating costs of healthcare, growing numbers of chronic illnesses, use of information technology (IT) in healthcare information, a high number of uninsured citizens and increasing medical errors and inadequate care (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). U.S. healthcare costs have been rising at an alarming rate over the last few years. In 2014, national health care expenditures rose by 5.3% to $ 3 trillion which translates to $9523 per individual. This accounts for 17.5% of the GDP. Medicare spending increased by 5.5% (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). Medicaid rose by 11% while spending on commercial health insurance grew by 4.4% according to the 2014 statistics (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). The increasing growth of costs in the healthcare systems can be attributed to among other factors new expensive medical therapies, increasing costs of the insurance premiums increasing number of people with chronic illnesses and decreasing number of insurer competition (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). Sadder is that this growth in healthcare costs have not translated into better health care outcomes, neither has it increased life expectancy as it would be expected. However, it has made health care less affordable for many citizens (Andersen, Davidson, & Baumeister, 2013). Most families have dropped insurance coverage due to high costs of premiums, and these families do not access adequate health care when they fall sick due to lack of healthcare insurance coverage.
Another trending issue in U.S. healthcare is the growing number of chronic illnesses among the Americans. Current stati...