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Health People 2010

Access to Health Care 1

Running Head: ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE

Access to Health Care
Caren Clinkscales
Oakland University

Access to Health Care 2
Abstract
Healthy People 2010 is a series of health goals that was established in order to increase overall health in our Nation by the year 2010. Within this initiative there are ten health indicators which reflect the key health concerns of the U.S including access to health care. I will discuss this topic along with three supporting articles that demonstrate that health care accessibility is impacting the health problem in the United States.

Access to Health Care 3
Access to Health Care
A report released in December by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics found more than 40 million people lack access to the health care they need. And 20 percent of U.S. adults needed and did not receive medical care, prescription medicine, mental health care, dental care or eyeglasses in 2005 because they could not afford them. This is why there is a need to discuss the lack of access to quality health care and services in the U.S. in my paper. Three articles will be used to support my concern for this topic and discuss the findings from each reading. The content of the Healthy People 2010 Report will be discussed in my efforts to argue how this topic impacts the health problems in the United States.
In a research article by Puentes-Markides (1992), access to health care for women in developing countries was discussed with reference to Latin American and Caribbean countries. The availability of literature on the concept of access as it relates to other variables such as accountability, affordability and acceptability of health services were discussed. Many approaches to defining variable affecting access to health care were discussed in this article. While some of them suggest that ability to pay for services act as a major determinant of access to health...