"Health care in the United States"

Wednesday July 04, 2007
Happy Birthday America


Today we selected following read on "Health care in the United States"

"The debate about U.S. health care concerns questions of access, efficiency, and quality purchased by the high sums spent. The overall performance of the United States health care system was ranked 37th by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000, but the same report assessed Americans' overall health at 72nd among 191 member nations included in the study.However, most Americans rate their own health as "excellent" or "very good". The National Health Interview Survey, released annually by the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statisticsreported that approximately 66% of survey respondents said they were in "excellent" or "very good" health in 2006. This percentage has been declining since 1998"

"Most Americans, 59.5%, receive their health insurance coverage through an employer, and about 9% purchase it directly from the market.Government sources cover 27.3% of the population (80.2 million).In 2005, there were 46.6 million people in the U.S. (15.9% of the population) who were without health insurance for at least part of that year. Among the uninsured, nearly 37 million were employment-age adults (ages 18 to 64), and more than 26 million worked at least part time. Approximately a quarter of the uninsured live in households with an income over $50,000.It is has been estimated that nearly one fifth of the uninsured population is able to afford insurance, almost one quarter is eligible for public coverage, and that the remaining 56% need financial assistance (8.9% of all Americans)".


you can have the full read here (source: wikipedia.org)