The family is a crucial ingredient in the American economy, it is important that the health care assist the family, as well as ensuring in the United States there is the least infant mortality. It is important that the health care is available to all, and is easily accessible; families and children should have an emergency they can receive all the necessary services in a very short time. The health care is also crucial that is provided at a cost that all families in the United States of America can afford. All families in any social groups in the society need to have access to the health care, including the homeless who their number has increased with the recent economic depression. It should not only be for the rich and the middle class families. All families in the United States of America have a right to have access to the health care they can afford. It is also finally important that that health care is exemplary in quality. Health care is a part of the United States way of life that is as crucial as security, education and other sectors are._x000D_
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American health experts Ronald Anderson, Thomas Rice, and Gerald Kominski (2007) in their book ‘Changing the US health Care System’ shares broadly their research and recommendations on the key areas in the management and producing sound and effective health services in the USA. They identify the key factors needed to achieve this as quality assurance, cost control and sound policy management on accessibility of health care services._x000D_
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Accessibility of Health Services for Children and Families._x000D_
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The authors define access to health services as the connection between the target population and the health providers. It entails getting up to standards health care in the right time and the utilization of the mechanisms that touches on the quality delivery of the health systems. Access does not necessarily limit itself from just the ordinary visit to a health facility, but it is the delivery of the needed care by the American families including children. The authors recommend the measuring and conceptualization of accessibility of health services to enable them to correctly calculate and predict the utilization of health services (Gulliford & Morgan, 2003). The question on whether accessibility to health services in the United States is improving or going down is raised, and they investigate on the trends of their hypothesis experimentally._x000D_
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In order to understand the accessibility of health care services to American families the authors take two approaches: personal or individual determinants and contextual determinants of getting health services and also focus on the dimensions of access and suggestions on various ways of improving the dimension. They define contextual as the environmental factors affecting the access by families to health services, as well as certain circumstances that may affect the accessibility. Context here means the organization of the health services and the providers of the facilities factors that may include some trends in the community. Contextual factors are not meted at individual level, but rather they are aggregated from small groups say like from a family setting going up to larger units like the state’s health care. Between these units there also exist others like work teams, health care providers, health plans, local community, as well as the metropolitan health systems. The personal level is then compared to these aggregate groups by the way of being part of either the family, work teams, institutions that provide healthcare and the health plan units, or still being an inhabitant of the given community, metropolitan area and the state health system. This model reveals that the main contextual characteristics are grouped similarly to the personal characteristics of access determination._x000D_
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First, there are already existing conditions which compel the families and children to either use or ignore the services, despite the fact that the conditions might not directly be there for use. Secondly, the condition which enables facilitation of health services or reduces the facilitation. On the individual characteristics, it should be noted that population distribution is dictated by gender, marital and the age composition of a given community. It follows then that a community, whose main composition is the youth, might have different health facilities compared to that which might have a composition of elderly people (Shi & Singh, 2010). Characteristics based on the social settings at the contextual level define how helpful or unsupportive the community may be on their health care access. Other parameters includes levels of education, ethnicity, rate of crime, level of employment, as well as beliefs that may influence a community’s cultural values on how health services should be financed or organized largely influence the accessibility to the health care._x000D_
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Controlling Cost of Health Care_x000D_
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The United States have one the most expensive health cares in comparison to other developed nations, yet it tallies behind other developed nations, as far as the offering quality of its health care is concerned. Following this trend, some experts have pointed out some of the possibilities of this anomalous trend. Some of the issues that contribute to the rise of the cost of health care to families and children here in the United States of America include the rapid change in technology and use of prescribed drugs. For many years, the cost of medical research and use of prescribed drugs happened to contribute enormously to the expenditure on health care, but with modern ideas in technological advancements has resulted in the introduction of modern high standards medical innovations which result in the expensive spending for their research and development, and medical experts believe that their research is not cost effective._x000D_
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Enough time and consultations should be carried before introducing new technologies to the market to contain the cost of healthcare provision. The rise in chronic diseases in the United States has necessitated the government to invest a lot in research and the production of drugs. Roughly, around 75% of the national expenditure in health comes from treatment of chronic diseases, this includes preventable ones like obesity which later results into more severe chronic diseases. The government should strive to address the issue of preventing (Kovner et. al., 2011). Around 7% of the healthcare spending comes as a result of administrative costs of the State’s health care programs. The government should strive to reduce this cost as a sure means of controlling the average cost of health care. Research shows that the middle and low class earners basically are not likely to have insurance both at individual level and at the family level. This diverse difference ranges across different ethnic backgrounds of race. For example, according to the authors research results, only 56% of the black population is covered, 44% Mexicans, 62% Cubans which rates low to the national mean of 70% (Dutton, 2007)._x000D_
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The United |States have had a long struggle to control the cost of health and this has led to there being a number of debates, commissions and various recommendations on how to cut the cost of health care to benefit the average American. The affordable Care Act of 2010 came up with different suggestions on various ways of improving the cost of health care in the US. One way was the involvement of the government in the regulation of health insurance premiums and a check on practices by the insurance providers. This was aimed at ensuring that majority of the American population could be in a position to afford he premiums on various covers in health care (Niles, 2011). Another approach considered was to make it open to the general public the sale of healthcare insurance policies through the Health Insurance Exchanges, and also inducing competition among the providers as a way of increasing efficiency and affordability. Revision of the cost of healthcare was also suggested in both treatment and admission o health facilities the Comparative Effectiveness Research requires funding which compares various strategies necessary in the prevention, diagnosis and the treatment of various diseases (Jonas, Goldsteen & Goldsteen, 2007). There was need to refocus the delivery of the healthcare systems to concentrate on the patient as way of improving care for example having a call doctor within a reasonable distance from area of residence. Other proposals aimed at controlling the cast of healthcare were to introduce Information technology to modern homes a way of handling patient’s requests, increasing the speed of communication between the service providers as well as their clients. There is need for the cost to be controlled so as to ensure that it is accessible to all._x000D_
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Quality in Health Care Provision in the United States_x000D_
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Quality health care is defined the dispensation of safe, patient centered, efficient and safe health practices without the consideration of racism and other ethnical parameters. According to the Agency for healthcare research and quality, AHRQ, quality gaps are witnessed in different ways in dispensing healthcare in America. One of the main objectives of the agency is to check on the rate of overuse and under use of some healthcare facilities available in the United States. In the case of overuse, the agency notes that millions of American families and children normally get healthcare facilities that can be classified as unnecessary or even dangerous to their health. For instance, research carried in the in the operations of seven women who had underwent hysterectomies revealed that only one was appropriate (Austin & Wetle, 2011). Another good example is the use of expensive antibiotics used in the treatment of ear infection in children who revealed that the use was more than the indicated amount. This indication means that even, if some families can afford quality medical facilities, it still can harm them in the long term._x000D_
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Underuse of health care in the US is also evident and this results to slow productivity and increase the cost of quality healthcare. Variation in the practice of health care in the regions in US is also part of the evidence that that various health care do not conform to the ever improving technology in science and medical innovations. To be able to provide quality health care every stake holder should be involved in the process, that is, from the patient all the way to the doctor. Health plans need to be put in front line both with the focus of the short term benefits to the long term benefits. Health policies are authoritative directives that are meant to influence the delivery of quality health care. The policies are either made from the central or federal governments in the US, but certain private policies do exist that are normally coined by executives of certain organizations. With the directives from credited organizations like the National Committee for Quality Assurance, financing of the health care can be described contextually and represent the resources available to fund the cost of the health facilities including per capita income._x000D_
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All those involved in American Health care system have no choice, but to ensure that it is the best world over for families and children. It is important that the health care is available to all and is easily accessible; when families and children have an emergency they can receive all the necessary services in a very short time. The health care is also crucial that is provided at a cost that all in the United States of America can afford. All social groups in the society need to have access to the health care. It should not only be for the rich and the middle class. All the citizens of the United States of America have a right to have access to health care they can afford. It is also finally important that that health care is exemplary quality. Health care is part of the United States way of life that is as crucial just like security, education and other sectors are. Proper federal and state support is necessary to help achieve all the goals that the health care is meant to achieve. Also other sectors of the private sectors such as insurance companies, private health providers and others have to be prepared to help in the provision of quality health care to the American families and children. The United States has to ensure just like other nations have succeeded in provision of proper health care to their families and children, we should endeavor to provide the same if not better for the citizens.