Abstract

The condition of the United States (US) health care system is currently at the center of national debate; and attempts to reform a flagging system are underway (Rutenberg & Calmes, 2009; Stolberg & Herszenhorn, 2010). The American health care system is in distress. An estimated 43.8 to 46.3 million individuals in the US are uninsured (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2009; DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2008; U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). The majority of health coverage in the US is provided through employer-based insurance (Blumenthal, 2006; Congressional Budget Office [CBO,] 2007); but with the current economic crisis and a resulting rise in unemployment rates, concerns over existing health care coverage are escalating (Blumenthal, 2006; Brown, 2008; Sessions & Detsky, 2009). The cost of health care in the US is nearly twice as much as other developed countries, and costs continue to rise faster than personal incomes and the economy (CBO, 2007; Commonwealth Fund, 2008; Marmot & Bell, 2009). Health care spending currently exceeds $2 trillion dollars a year or 16.2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services [CMS], 2007). Furthermore, the US remains the only industrialized country in the world that fails to provide universal health care for its residents (Davis et al., 2007; McIntosh, 2002).

Description

The author retains copyright.

Author Details

Lindsay Thompson Munn, PhD, RN

Sigma Membership

Mu Psi

Type

Thesis

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Literature Review

Research Approach

Other

Keywords:

Health Care Systems, Health Outcomes, Health Care Costs

Advisors

Jacobson-Vann, Julie

Degree

Master's

Degree Grantor

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Degree Year

2010

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2019-03-01

Full Text of Presentation

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