Question

1. Describe some of the factors that have played a role in shaping the current state of US health care.
2. How might traditional beliefs act as barriers to healthcare?
3. Do you feel that, in the U.S., some populations are served better than others in terms of healthcare?  Support your opinion with specific examples.
4. Describe three possible barriers to healthcare.
5. Explain how you would go about making a patient who is unfamiliar with U.S. healthcare more comfortable during a typical physical exam.
6. Describe how shifting from a cure based healthcare system to a preventative based one might impact healthcare access and cost.
7. What is the triple aim and why is it important to health care reform?
8. How is the Affordable Care Act shaping the role of Respiratory Care Practitioners?

Answer 1

1. The US healthcare system is one of the most developed and advanced system in healthcare industry across the globe.
Some of the important factors that led to development of current healthcare in US are:

- financial capacity : US is a developed nation with a sound financial system. This has led to better spending in healthcare sector.
- adoption of new technologies and health informatics.

- better literacy rate and awareness of population about diseases and role of healthcare

- development of policies and regulations such affordable care act has played a great part in framing the current healthcare system.
- availability of skilled and professional healthcare professionals

2. Different people follow different cultures and different traditions. These traditions are associated with different kinds of beliefs. Some traditions still follow healthcare related taboos which acts as barrier to healthcare. Some people believe that God, priests and other higher power can heal their diseases and instead of going to a healthcare setting these people go to priests or other places. This increases the risk pf complications and sometimes can even lead to death.
Some people believe that abortions and using of contraceptives is a sin and God does not permit it. This causes uncontrolled birth which has deteriorating effects on women health.
So we can say traditional beliefs can hinder, prohibit and inhibit use if healthcare and its services.
3. Although every individual have the righ to be served equally in healthcare and discrimination based on gender, culture, colour and caste is a crime, discrimination is seen in various places in healthcare industry. Some population in US are seeved better than the other. For eg: discrimination based on skin colour is very common in healthcare. White people are served better and have a better access to healthcare than black people.
Similarly people following different religion such as Hinduism are discriminated from the rest of population and many a times their beliefs and religious processes are disrespected.
4. The three possible barriers in healthcare are:

- costs : increasing costs and expenses

- access to healthcare : accessibility to helathcare is still difficult in rural areas

- finding of skilled professional in healthcare : with increasingly demand of healthcare, finding skilled, trained and professional healthcare workers has become difficult.