Comparison of The Healing of America and Delivering Health Care in America

Shahab Vaziri

James Madison University

In chapters nine through the appendix of The Healing of America by T.R. Reid, it is illustrated about the advanced endeavors, which Reid goes on, to find out about the ins and outs of foreign health care policies and how the United States can borrow ideas, even if the country is a suffering third-world country.
Chapter nine is entitled out of pocked because it has the theme of people in foreign countries attempting to buy insurance in any manner that involves cash without any entitlement or responsibility after the fact. Many poor foreign nations in Africa and South Asia are heavily reliant on the out-of-pocket model that deals with paying for care with currency, and if that is not available then “potatoes or pottery or dairy products or babysitting services or whatever he can scratch up” will work (Reid, 2010 A). Although America does have insurance plans for people to buy into, the extremely poor people use the out-of-pocket model and are more likely to get sick and stay sick without insurance. The same holds true for countries with out-of-pocket polices, according to Shi and Singh; they have the “least resources and the greatest health burden” (Shi and Singh, 2015 A). This illustrates that Reid and Shi and Singh agree upon the fact that being poor and sick in a developing country is more detrimental than being sick in America without health insurance. This becomes more evident later on in chapter nine when Reid mentions non-traditional ways of treatment and how developing countries “take an all-inclusive approach to medicine, looking for the best results, whether traditional or modern” (Reid, 2010 A). The main reason these developing governments have made relentless efforts to improve their health is because of the “huge gap”, according to