This decision is a victory for the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, who was supported by David Cameron when he fought to allow patients to give cash directly to their doctors during a row with the Treasury. However, the Chancellor George Osborne was worried about placing such a large amount of money (estimated at around £70 billion) in the responsibility of GPs again. Mr Lansley reassured Mr Osborne that money would not be wasted during this critical time, when enormous spending cuts mean institutions such as the NHS become increasingly vulnerable.

Mr Lansley highlighted the commitment of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to strengthen the authority of British GPs, whilst analysts regard this decision as the most radical series of changes that the NHS has witnessed since its inception in 1948. Trade unions in the public sector are likely to protest these plans, which will inevitable involve large numbers of job losses. Mr Lansley is hopeful that such plans will be put into practise by April 2011, although some NHS managers regard this as overly-ambitious. Eventually, primary care trusts will be scrapped as power is passed onto GPS.

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The truth is that the French system offers a wide level of choice for patients, with extensive general practitioners and specialists with health care standards much the same as in other western countries. The healthcare in France is funded by workers - employees pay a basic rate of twenty percent of their gross income to fund the Sécurité sociale (the French social security system) and self-employed individuals are required to pay a higher percentage

One of the most important principles of the French health care system is to provide quality access to care for all of its citizens, regardless of their ability to pay for their treatment. La Couverture maladie universelle is the French equivalent of universal health care coverage and all French people have access to it under law. The poorer a person is, the less they are required to pay. In turn, the more ill a person is, the less they will pay. This is in stark contrast to the United States, where Insurance Companies (branded by Democrat politician Nancy Pelosi as ’monsters’) charge extortionate fees for even the poorest families, many of whom were unable to afford health insurance in the past.

All patients in France pay the full bill when seeing a doctor or a specialist, which is later reimbursed, usually at a refund of 70 percent. This differs to the British system where do not have to pay to see a doctor or to receive treatment. However, in France patients can negotiate these fees, which will usually depend on their financial circumstances.

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There has been a recent announcement by Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust that they have joined hands with Intersystem, an IT firm, for its Ensemble integration engine. The trust had their own rudimentary system till now which they were using, but that had its set of serious drawbacks. New processes if any required a complete disruption of the system to include the process and test it too.

The present one that they have received with the deal with Intersystems would be able to work in different environments and therefore working of the hospital would not get effected even if new processes are introduced into the system, if required. This digital engine had been used by Bolton Hospital which is where the present Trafford Healthcare people had noticed it.

The system once in place, and which is expected to happen by August, would provide a composite patient record as well as support to a number of integration engines using the HL7. The trust would therefore have a configuration management environment which would extend support to its quality management process in three environments; live, back-up and test.

There is going to be a transfer of intelligence phase where the skill or working process of the system would be explained by the Intersystems’ people to the trust people who are responsible for the healthcare program that the trust is running or managing.

The entire process would help in faster admission as well as discharge of patients from hospitals where this program is implemented.

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While India is a country noted for its poor quality of life in comparison to western countries, it also scores very poorly on the quality of care available for patients suffering from terminal illnesses. New figures from the Economic Intelligence Unit, which measures the quality of ‘end-of-life care’ in 40 countries, ranked India at the bottom, below numerous developing nations. Countries such as Uganda, one of the most violent, corrupt countries in the world, scored higher than India on this measure, whilst the United Kingdom was ranked number one in the international survey. Accessing good quality health care in a country like India is hard, mainly due to the fact that there simply aren’t enough doctors or hospitals to accommodate the population of 1.13 billion.

The survey reveals a number of surprising findings. France, which has generally been ranked as providing one of the world’s most efficient and cost-effective health care systems, was ranked 12^th place - below the United States, Canada and Australia. Other developed countries such as Italy and Denmark fared worse, achieving number 22 and number 24 respectively. Sweden, which is known for having one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, only managed the number 16 position, ranking it below countries such as Taiwan.

Meanwhile, the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance announced that only eight percent of over 100 million patients in the world actually receive palliative long term care. These shockingly low figures generally result from high budget costs, cultural issues, ineffective policies and limited access to medical care, all of which are problems even in developed countries. Many otherwise superb health care systems fail when it comes to end-of-life care because the bulk of these patients are the elderly – an age group which is growing year by year as life expectancy increases. End-of-life care will continue to face tougher demand as the ageing population phenomenon continues.

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Dentistry is not new, evidence having been found as far back as the Neolithic period in Pakistan and drilled teeth as old as 7000 BC being found in the Indus Valley. Texts dating back to around 5000 BC refer to a ‘tooth worm’ causing decayed teeth, a belief that persisted for many hundreds of years since then. Hippocrates, the Greek ‘Father of Medicine’ described the sequence of teeth erupting, undertook extraction and attempted to treat fractured jaws and the subsequent loosened teeth by stabilizing them with wire.

Dentists undergo specific training to obtain their dental qualifications which may include up to four years of graduation followed by post-graduate training to be considered experienced and suitably qualified to take care of the oral health of people. Dentistry is often defined as the appraisal and diagnosis of diseases and other conditions of the maxillofacial, oral cavity and the structures adjacent or attached to those areas. This usually includes treatment of dental caries and other problems which can occur as the result of poor hygiene or trauma. Dentistry also covers more serious surgery of facial bones and other areas in the oral cavity and neck region.

When it comes to filling decayed teeth, various dental supplies and composites are used such as amalgam, porcelain and assorted metals. Other functions associated with the job of dentistry involve radiography, prescribing medication and carrying out specialized surgery. Dentists have the knowledge to use their recognition of symptoms revealed by dentistry to diagnose other indicative illnesses such as bilateral odontogenic keratocysts which can reveal neural illnesses and symptomatic diseases.

Prevention is as much a part of a dentist’s job as carrying out endodontic and periodontal therapy, or extracting and filling teeth under an anesthetic. Many dentists work as hygienists, advising their clients on the proper techniques of brushing and flossing, advising on fluoride anaphylaxis and undertaking regular polishing.

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French researchers have recently found that the type of food that obese parents eat that lead to their weight gain can lead to their children being obese too. Therefore the researchers claim that obesity is hereditary even though the weight gain is caused by the environment we are in, eg what foods are available to us and what foods we eat. The researchers have found that people in contries with obesity problems eat more omega-6 fatty acids and less omega-3 fatty acids, which causes the weight gain. The researchers discovered that this wrong proportion of fatty acids is translated into the breast milk of the mothers, which means that newborn babies are fed the wrong proportion of these fatty acids from birth, which leads to them getting accustomed to such a diet and therefore choosing a similar diet when they grow up, meaning that losing weight is chemically more difficult for them. This begs the question of whether it is worth encouraging obese and overweight people to feed their babies using bottled preparations instead of breastfeeding their newborns to break the obesity chain. Some may argue that this is unethical and that it infringes these people’s rights or discriminates against them in some way, but I think that it is no different from prescribing the children some medicine to cure an illness. If not breastfeeding the babies will help them grow up fit and healthy instead of overweight and in danger of diseases such as diabetes and heart problems, I think it should be encouraged and advised by the medical professionals to bottle feed them. Obviosly more research is necessary to confirm the French researchers'findings concerning the passage of obesity to the children through their mothers'milk, but if the findings are confirmed, steps should be taken to prevent the spread of obesity for the sake of the future generations.

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The English NHS has saved almost £1.7 billion this year for new policy changes, which is over seven times the amount it intends to save on its own management strategies.

Sir David Nicholson, the boss for the NHS said that the money would help to ’kick-start'this new transformation. The new funding will initiate the start of a gradual process where GPs and people working locum doctor jobs will gain greater control over budgets and the bureaucracy of NHS management will be significantly reduced.

The government proclaims that substantial savings will be achieved in future years, however concerns by unions were raised about the possibility that the spending may spiral out of control. All primary care trusts in England’s health authorities will be axed, which will affect the jobs of over 60,000 managers in the country. The £105 billion health budget is likely to be placed under the responsibility of several hundred GP consortiums, which could be set up by the end of the year and are likely to be in ’full swing'by the spring of 2013.

Meanwhile, further funds will be set aside over the coming years and ministers have been challenged with regards to the scale of these plans, which one British Medical Journal expert has estimated could be in the order of £2 billion to £3 billion pounds. Mr Cameron has been repeatedly challenged by acting Labour leader Harriet Harman over suggestions that the two week referral guarantee for cancer patients could be scrapped. The government’s Department of Health also admitted that it could not recognise the £1.7 billion figure.

Manchester Business School Professor Kieran Walshe was unconvinced that these new policy changes would provide a better standard of care for patients, nor was he convinced that this would facilitate the NHS to achieve its performance targets. Health expert James Gubb also warned that the NHS was in danger of becoming riddled with government restructuring programmes, which could lead to a fall in the quality of care for patients.

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The UK Foreign Office has found that many elderly Britons travelling to other countries have to endure costly treatment and extortionate repatriation bills when they fall ill. The report, which is entitled ’British Behaviour Abroad’, includes cases from the twelve month period April 2009 to March 2010. The Association of British Insurers stated that the final medical bills for such patients amounted to around £274 million for 2009.

A total of 5,930 deaths were reported for British citizens abroad, which included accidental deaths, natural causes and unlawful killings. The report found that most Britons required diplomatic assistance in Spain, with the highest proportion of British visitors requiring help in Asian countries such as Thailand and Pakistan. The Foreign Office also found that 944 Britons had been arrested in regards to drug-related offences, which accounted for roughly 14 percent of the total number of arrests for British nationals across the globe.

The Association of British Insurers stated that as much as £5.3 million worth of medical insurance claims was being paid every week to Britons that were in need of emergency health care treatment by professionals working other countries locum doctor jobs. Last year around 366,000 claims for medical treatment were sent to the company, which amounts to over 7000 a week. All in all, medical insurance claims comprised 60% of all claims paid for by the travel insurance companies.

Jeremy Browne, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister said that the new report helps to shed light on the large number of UK citizens who fall into difficulty when they are travelling abroad. He said that many of these situations could be prevented and that while the government would do its best to support Britons facing trouble abroad. However, Browne said there was nothing the British government could do for Britons who were imprisoned for breaking the laws of the land or those who were facing hefty hospital bills because they did not seek the appropriate medical coverage.

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The United States Healthcare System is quickly becoming run by the government. Soon there will be no choices for the people. They will have to just settle for whatever they are told to do, go to wherever they are told to go, and get whatever treatments they are told to get. It is getting more and more expensive for people to get health insurance. More people are losing their jobs and thus losing their insurance. Soon there will be no more benefits left for people to use because so much is having to be used now. There is really no sure fire solution to the Healthcare System fiasco. No matter what solution is tried there will always be someone who will be unhappy. There will always be people who will feel as though they were slighted or not taken care of.

There are some things that we can do to not have to use the Healthcare System too much. If we try to take better care of ourselves now we may not need to use the system quite so much when we get older, and pay the premiums out of our triple west medical insurance bonds. There is only so much to go around and with our obesity rate being as high as it is it will be hard to imagine that there will be any benefits left in twenty years. America is one of the highest obese countries in the world. We eat horrible foods and do not exercise. By not taking care of ourselves we are going to doom ourselves. Soon the funds will run out and we will have to pay out of pocket for treatment. Many of us can not afford medical treatments so we will just have to go without. This will cause some people to die early because they can not get the medical treatment they need.

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This health care system encapsulates very many components in the efforts of providing health services to its people. It starts with common sense practice whereby the people have access to doctors, nurses, specialists and medications. Doctors and nurses are assigned to neighborhoods and in case you do not like your doctor, you can choose another one. This trend is being followed by other countries.

The other key aspect in this system is the regular and routine house calls done by the doctors and nurses. This is because often many patients are unable to make it to the doctors’ offices or the clinics. Any incidence that cannot be catered by the neighborhood doctor is transferred to the polyclinics that provide specialists, outpatient services and operations, physical therapy and labs. Those in need of inpatient services are taken to general hospitals and after their treatment they are returned to their neighborhood by the neighborhood medical team. All doctors’ visits, medications, and treatments are paid for by the state.

This system has been directly responsible for a decrease in the infant mortality rate. Almost everyone has been vaccinated from diseases such as TB and malaria.

Due to the success of the system in Cuba a number of countries have welcomed their doctors and the skills they can impart. Currently there are over 14,000 of their doctors working overseas mainly in developing and poor countries. Many of these countries are in Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. They are also involved in the training of medical personnel including nurses.

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