Attached.

Running head: PUBLIC HEALTHCARE

1

Public Healthcare

Name of student
Name of Instructor
Name of course
Name of institution
Date

PUBLIC HEALTHCARE

2
Public Healthcare

The public healthcare system in a country should ensure the quality well-being of citizens. The
system should provide easy access to quality healthcare services. Healthcare access maintains
people’s health. It further decreases preventable infirmity, premature death, and achieves health
equity among all the citizens in a country. In doing this, residents in a country must have insurance
coverage to enable them to gain entry into healthcare facilities. Healthcare locations must be
available for easy access to the required services. Also, healthcare providers must be interactive
with respective patients to gain their trust.
However, healthcare access is an issue, especially to individuals with low living standards due to
the high cost of care, insufficient or no insurance coverage, unavailability of services, and
incompetent care of healthcare providers. These barriers result in unmet healthcare needs of
patients and inappropriate care due to delays. They further lead to a lack of preventive services,
financial burdens, and preventable hospitalizations. Viewing these issues, the departments and
interested groups in the healthcare sector have a critical role to play. The paper, therefore, aims at
analyzing the public health structure and functions at different government ranks, such as local,
state, and national levels. (Mays.et.al, 2009)
In describing structures between the levels of government, in the US at the national level, the
public health departments get structured in different forms. The departments are centralized since
all the healthcare units starting from the local ones to those at the state level, belong to the national
government. However, most of the departments get managed by s...