HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Mexico versus the United States Health Care System

Mexico versus the United States Health Care System

Introduction

The health care system in the United States has been diagnosed as a declining institution by a large quantity of media commentators and health policy analysts. Repeatedly rising health care costs and insufficient health assurance coverage for just about thirty-seven million people are cited as two of the most noticeable symptoms supporting their analysis. Most of these persons see small chance for the U.S. health care system to recuperate given its present plan. Complete recovery, they believe, requires the winning relocation of a health care system from a different country. The health care systems in Europe and Mexico, where government is assigned a much superior role than in the United States, are argued to present universal health care coverage and at the same time contain health care costs.

The United States stands before Mexico, the most important and extensive reform of its health care system in a generation. Given the scope of this undertaking, citizens and policymakers should examine fundamental assumptions about the changes to come. The contributors to this volume believe that a right to a basic and adequate standard of health care should be adopted as the fundamental premise of a reformed health care system for the United States. Currently the United States is the only western democracy that does not recognize a right to health care. Other industrialized nations like Mexico, Great Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan have long provided a legal entitlement to health care. By way of introducing our argument, the following pages will examine the problems of our health care system and the solutions suggested by a human rights approach to health care reform.

Cost Of Health Care

American healthcare costing policy has reached a critical turning point. Although the future direction of healthcare policy remains unclear, we can identify two diametrically opposed approaches to dealing with the crisis. One consists of a single payer (the federal government) making the principal allocation decisions regarding the extent and nature of services provided. Within this approach, regulatory means are used to attempt to monitor and improve quality and control costs. The other approach consists of multiple payers, insurers, and competing providers, a market orientation. The discussion in this paper is based on the assumption that there will be a continued effort to make the market work in health care in the United States.

Four disturbing trends account for much of the momentum toward change of the health care system in the United States. The first is escalating health costs. With spending on health care now rising at an annual rate of twelve to fifteen percent and consuming more than fourteen percent of the nation's total economic output, the cost of health care is straining the economy and state and federal budgets. These figures stand in marked contrast with such countries as Mexico, Britain, Germany, Sweden, France, and Japan, whose health care spending in 1990 ranged between six percent and nine percent while ...