Suggested by WHO, the concept of Universal Health coverage is rather basic, yet it is bound to trigger massive changes in the environment of healthcare, in general, and health insurance, in particular. According to the recent report published by WHO, the subject matter should be referred to as the initiative to provide people across the globe with an opportunity to access high-quality healthcare services no matter what their social status is. While being admittedly noble, the initiative is likely to take an impressive amount of time as the current U.S. concept of health coverage revolves around the idea of providing the corresponding services to the people that have reached a certain age (65), people with disabilities, ESRD, and ALS (Savioli &Velayudhan, 2014). Although both concepts are rather legitimate and tend to focus on the needs of the target population, the Medicare system that the U.S. healthcare coverage is based on does not seem to have the sense of universality and global wellbeing that the WHO project has. Therefore, the current U.S. healthcare coverage system could use a sharper focus on the needs of all members of the population.
Despite having a crucial difference that sets the two frameworks apart, the Universal Health Coverage concept suggested by the WHO and the Medicare framework that is currently deployed in the setting of American healthcare has a lot in common. First and most obvious, the two approaches share the philosophy of implying that healthcare services should be made available to all members of the population (Cheung & Marriott, 2015). While Medicare sets certain restrictions such as age and abilities, it also conveys the message of the universality of healthcare services.
Both ideas, therefore, mean that all citizens should have the access to healthcare and that the latter should be made affordable to everyone. While the Universal health Coverage framework stretches the boundaries of affordability even further, suggesting that all people, in general, should be provided with professional medical help, the Medicare framework also insists that the corresponding services should be an integral part of the set of basic human rights.
At this point, the issue regarding the visibility of the healthcare providers should be brought up. For the quality of the services to rise consistently, it is important to promote higher-visibility rates of the corresponding facilities and organizations. Particularly, building the aggregated data that will allow for a more coherent process of medication authorization (Cronk, Slaymaker, & Bartram, 2015) should be considered. Thus, the provision of the corresponding healthcare services will become a possibility for U.S. organizations, and the quality of the services will rise along with the patient recovery rates.
Although both the WHO initiative and the U.S. health coverage framework known as Medicare are aimed at promoting the wellbeing of the population, the limitations that are currently set on the Medicare system create an environment, in which the rights of some members of the population may be infringed. Therefore, it is imperative to make sure that the ideas suggested by the WHO should be promoted in American healthcare so that they could emerge in the context of the contemporary Medicare framework. In other words, it is essential to make sure that healthcare services of the approved quality should be provided to every single member of the population, as the current WHO framework suggests.
Reference List
Cheung, S., & Marriott, B. (2015). Impact of an economic Downturn on addiction and mental health service utilization: A review of the literature. Alberta Health Services, 1(1), 1-5.
Cronk, R., Slaymaker, T., & Bartram, J. (2015). Monitoring drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene in non-household settings: Priorities for policy and practice. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, 1(1), 1-10.
Savioli L., &Velayudhan, R. (2014). Small bite, big threat: World Health Day 2014. EMHJ, 20(4), 217-218.