Talk:Health care

I heard on the news that in 2002 the % of the GDP (maybe GNP) was raised from like 9 % in '75 to 14.9 % in 2002 for the U.S.

Also, a total of 121 billion dollars in canada is spent (in '03 or '02) to finance healthcare, which is 30% of the Canadian spending that year. THis has dropped from the 45% of the spending used for healthcare in '75 in Canada

Prety Nuts

just tune in to the news and u can find MUCH more info

Reorganisation of sections

I removed the section on healthcare by country as there is now category:healthcare by nationality. So, rather than adding a long list of nations here, I have added a link to the new category. I have rearranged the paragraphs slightly to make the preview shorter and grouped the information on the healthcare industry into one place. --Vincej 13:32, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Definition

Regarding: "I agree with your rewording of the first sentence, except I have readded the link to allied health as not everyone will know what this is. I think that 'social' should be added to the definition (I have not done so, as yet) which is then consistent then with WHO definition of health. [1] What do you think?" I am not a fan of the WHO definition of health for reason described in Health, however, I'm not against the idea of including "social" in the definition: "Health care or healthcare is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental, physical, and social well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions." To what specifically would "social well-being" refer, though? Edwardian 19:42, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Social well-being is being in a comfortable social condition, enough resources, somewhere to live, occupied etc. Most models of health state that social conditions are an essential component of health. However, it could be contested that although social conditions are a contributor to health they are not part of health care, per se. After all, the phrase is often split into health and ksocial care indicating that they are separate entities. Nevertheless, the brief section on the social model of healthcare, that I contributed, hopefully gives credence to seeing health from a social perspective.(If interested, this debate is further articulated here [2])I am happy to either canvas opinon on the topic prior to adding 'social' or to go ahead and allow other Wikipedians to edit as they see fit. --Vincej 10:30, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I accept your definition of "social well-being", however, I am not certain that social-well being services (i.e. "providing for enough resources, somewhere to live" etc.) are those which medical and allied health professionals offer. Social well-being certainly affects or is affected by health or healthcare (and perhaps that is enough to include "social" in the definition), but I'm concerned that writing the definition that way might necessitate that social workers and homeless shelter volunteers are included as "allied health professionals". Edwardian 16:07, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Let's leave it as it is for now with social well-being as one of the determinants of health rather than a product of healthcare and see what others think. --Vincej 09:10, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Holistic Neologism

Certainly, I can accept that health care is a neologism butI find the term "holistic neologism" objectionable. Not only is it POV but its meaning is extremely murky - is a holist neologism one that arises in a holistic, organic fashion? What is meant is something like "new age neologism" but idea that the term "health care" originated this way needs a bit of support.

The funny is that only references to the phrase "holistic neologism" on google point back to mirrors of this article but were more than six hundred when I checked.

Hans Joseph Solbrig 19:55, 20 September 2005 (UTC)