The issues connected with the US healthcare system have now become one of the most crucial public concerns within the state. The major issue with this system lies in the dissonance between the taxes rate US citizens annually pay the government to sustain the healthcare segment and the actual, unreasonably high insurance costs. In order to resolve the problem, the federal healthcare system has now been divided into the two major camps of Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs, supposedly considering the gap in the residents’ income rates. As a system based upon the capitalistic principles, US healthcare is mostly dealing with private businesses that obtain federal grants to provide people with medical aid.
However, over the years, the quality of such an approach has deteriorated significantly due to market monopolization. On the contrary, healthcare patterns in Finland have been acknowledged as some of the most efficient policy principles in the world. Thus, this paper’s main purpose is to conduct a contrastive analysis concerning both the US and Finland healthcare systems in order to define future implications for American healthcare development.
Over the past decades, the healthcare system in Finland has overcome various challenges caused by some external economic factors such as the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Hence, the country’s economy for a while was considerably dependent on the private sector, thus affecting healthcare development (Saltman & Teperi, 2016). The primary system’s goal was, in fact, quite similar to the American patterns of governance, implying the market expansion to various private medical enterprises that compete to propose the best option for the state’s population.
However, when speaking of these two countries, the current outcomes vary significantly in market competitiveness. In Finland, for example, it has led to a complete system decentralization, creating a gap in terms of efficiency, cost, and productivity (Saltman & Teperi, 2016). While such a variety of options can be beneficial for the country’s population, the government has little ability to account for each of these private aspects of the system.
When speaking of the US, the market has now become monopolized by the two companies who are, in fact, able to reform their policy with practically no consequences due to people’s desperation. Even more, frustration is caused by the fact that the US healthcare system presupposes cutting federal taxes for people with low-income rates, leaving all the responsibility to the middle-class representatives (Saez & Zuckman, 2019). Such inequality has inevitably caused public resentment against market monopolization.
When taking the two healthcare systems into consideration, it may be concluded that both are to be reconsidered to present maximum benefit for both the government and the population. Since both of them suffer from affordability dissonance, it is crucial for the US system to reassure that present providers like Medicare and Medicaid work for the public need satisfaction without turning into a national catastrophe. In another case, the public resentment might lead to a revolution on the market, allowing many companies to compete in the market. Such a shift would be disastrous for the US government if to take into consideration Finland’s case where federal healthcare policy is controlled by businesses. Regarding the gap in population rates in the two states, this issue in the US context might lead to chaos that would last for decades.
References
Saez, E., & Zuckman, G. (2019). Make no mistake: Medicare for All would cut taxes for most Americans. Web.
Saltman, R. B., & Teperi, J. (2016). Health reform in Finland: current proposals and unresolved challenges. Health Economics, Policy and Law, 11(3), 303-319.