Health Care or Healthcare – What’s the Difference? As a clinician, patient care is the top priority. So how does this sentiment about care for one’s health translate from the spoken to the written word? I realize that in documenting about someone’s health, I have seen and used both health care and healthcare, often synonymously.
But is one more correct than the other? Did I have it wrong all this time? How – and when – should they be used differently? Turning to Google, it quickly unfolds that the answer is not simple. There is no clear authority, and I am not the first to ponder. In 2014, this question was in Google’s top 20 percent for searches, clearly suggesting this is more than a “tomato, tomahto” thing.
To find an answer, I turned to additional language and technology experts to see if there was consensus. Spoiler alert: there is not.
- Associated Press (AP): The AP Stylebook, a consensus reference for journalists and news outlets suggests the two-word form health care as a noun and health-care as an adjective.
- Dictionaries: The two most authoritative dictionaries for the English language – Merriam-Webster and Oxford English – have consensus that health care is two-words when used as a noun.
- Microsoft: Microsoft Word was not helpful, providing no red or blue underlines, suggesting that both healthcare and health care were acceptable in any context.
- Google: Google Trends show consistently from the late 1990’s the use of healthcare surpassing health care. Healthcare is used frequently, and increasingly, from academic and government organizations to retailers, such as Target and Walmart.
Is it health care or healthcare grammar?
‘ Health care—two words—refers to a provider’s actions. Healthcare—one word—is a system. We need the second to have the first,’ says Dr.
Is healthcare one word or two Chicago?
The AP would say that health care is two words ; the Chicago Manual of Style, popular in academia, would write that as 2 words, but agree with the premise.
How is healthcare in England?
National Health Service – The NHS is free at the point of use for the patient though there are charges associated with eye tests, dental care, prescriptions, and many aspects of personal care. The NHS provides the majority of healthcare in England, including,,, and,
- The came into effect on 5 July 1948.
- Private health care has continued parallel to the NHS, paid for largely by private insurance, but it is used by less than 8% of the population, and generally as a top-up to NHS services.
- Recently there have been some examples where unused private sector capacity has been used to increase NHS capacity and in some cases the NHS has commissioned the private sector to establish and run new facilities on a sub contracted basis.
The involvement of the private sector remains relatively small and according to one survey by the, a large proportion of the public oppose such involvement.
How is healthcare in Britain?
The UK healthcare system – The UK has a free publicly-funded healthcare system – the National Health System (NHS). The NHS is different from many healthcare systems elsewhere as it is funded through taxation rather than health insurance. There is also a smaller private healthcare sector that people can choose if they wish.
Each region of the UK has its own NHS body. This guide will focus mainly on the service in England but you can find out more information about services in other regions on the websites for NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and NHS Northern Ireland, The differences between the regional health services are mainly structural and how some of the services are delivered.
The NHS in England is overseen by the Department of Health, NHS England is responsible for commissioning primary care services such as doctors, dentists, and pharmacists. Since 2013, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) have had the responsibility of commissioning secondary care services in local areas, which are:
planned hospital care; rehabilitative care; urgent and emergency care; most community health services; mental health and learning disability services
There have been many structural changes to the NHS over the years. Many private companies and charities have become more involved in running services in recent years. All services are publicly funded and the government is ultimately accountable, although in reality it is more of a public-private partnership in terms of delivery. The UK was ranked 16th on the 2018 Euro Health Consumer Index,
Is healthcare a right USA?
November 19, 2018 Human Rights – The only remedy to our lack of access to health care is to stop confusing health insurance with health care. Health is not a commodity; it is a right. There are rights to which we are entitled, simply by virtue of our humanity. Human rights exist independent of our culture, religion, race, nationality, or economic status.
- Only by the free exercise of those rights can we enjoy a life of dignity.
- Among all the rights to which we are entitled, health care may be the most intersectional and crucial.
- The very frailty of our human lives demands that we protect this right as a public good.
- Universal health care is crucial to the ability of the most marginalized segments of any population to live lives of dignity.
Without our health we—literally—do not live, let alone live with dignity. In the United States, we cannot enjoy the right to health care. Our country has a system designed to deny, not support, the right to health. The United States does not really have a health care system, only a health insurance system.
Our government champions human rights around the world, insisting that other countries protect human rights, even imposing sanctions for a failure to do so. Our government is not as robust in protecting rights at home. The right to health care has long been recognized internationally. Ironically, the origins of this right are here in the United States.
Health care was listed in the Second Bill of Rights drafted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Sadly, FDR’s death kept this Second Bill of Rights from being implemented. Eleanor Roosevelt, however, took his work to the United Nations (UN), where it was expanded and clarified.
She became the drafting chairperson for the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). That committee codified our human rights, including, at Article 25, the essential right to health. The United States, together with all other nations of the UN, adopted these international standards. Since the adoption of the UDHR, every other industrialized country in the world—and many non-industrialized countries—have implemented universal health care systems.
Such systems ensure that all persons within their borders enjoy their right to health care. In 1966, years after passage of the UDHR, the UN proposed another treaty including health care: the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural and Rights (CESCR),
The CESCR further clarified, at Article 12, “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” “Health” in this context is understood as not just the right to be healthy and have health care, but as a right to control one’s own body, including reproduction.
Article 12 goes on to require that “states must protect this right by ensuring that everyone within their jurisdiction has access to the underlying determinants of health, such as clean water, sanitation, food, nutrition, and housing, and through a comprehensive system of health care, which is available to everyone without discrimination, and economically accessible to all.” This treaty was signed by all UN countries.
- It was ratified by all countries except three—Palau, Comoros, and the United States of America.
- All signatory nations to CESCR are subject to periodic review of progress on the human rights so protected.
- The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights also reviews progress on rights protected by the UDHR.
- In preparation for these reviews, the U.S.
government submits a report, touting its successes in the area of human rights. Shockingly, or maybe just realistically, the U.S. report to the UN in 2015 fails to even identify health as a human right. Instead, it refers to efforts on health “measures,” intentionally avoiding use of the word “right” relative to health.
UPR report of the U.S. government, section H, paragraphs 100 and 101,) A reading of that report generates near disbelief among health advocates; “health measures” are not even remotely akin to “health rights.” But it was the only appropriate term to use. The only progress the United States had to report was the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a health insurance law, not a health care law.
The United States could not admit to the UN that it had made no progress on so basic and fundamental a right as health. What the government did not want to say is that contrary to ensuring the right to health, it continues to violate the UDHR with a system that discriminates against minority groups and/or all in poverty.
- This results in a “non-system” of health care.
- The UDHR does not condition health upon ability to pay, citizenship, or any other condition.
- The United States does.
- By codifying a system allowing huge corporate profits on health care as a commodity, our government has actually impaired, not improved, our right to health care.
So maybe, and refreshingly, the United States was just being honest with the UN about its failure to ensure and protect the human right to health care. This failure to protect the right to health is puzzling. From FDR’s drafting of the Second Bill of Rights to Dwight Eisenhower’s success in passing Medicare, our country’s leaders have attempted to ensure our right to health.
- The crucial and intersectional nature of that right was recognized in the 1960s by Martin Luther King Jr.
- During the Poor People’s Campaign.
- He affirmed that: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Chicago press conference held on March 25, 1966, in connection with the annual meeting of Medical Committee for Human Rights.
It is equally puzzling that our government has lauded, and continues to laud, the passage of the Patient Protection and ACA as a way to guarantee the right to health care. It is true that there have been improvements in our country’s health statistics since the passage of the ACA.
As a result of the ACA, many people, through Medicaid expansion, are now able to see a medical professional when needed. And prior to enactment of the ACA, the death rate for lack of health care was appalling: Three people in our country died every 30 minutes for lack of health care. Since the ACA, that death rate has gone down, but it is still present.
No matter how it is spun, health insurance is simply not health care. Nowhere is that contrast clearer than in personal stories of suffering. After codification of cost barriers by the ACA, people were shocked; they had been convinced this law was a reform that would actually increase access to health care.
While collecting stories, I spoke to Susan in Vermont. She is 27 years old and says: “I simply don’t understand what happened. I was told that the ACA would let me get the health care I need. I pay my premium every month. Now that I’m really sick, I can’t go to work and have very little income. It turns out I can’t go see my doctor without paying because I haven’t yet spent $2,000 this year out of my own pocket— after paying all my premiums.
So, even after paying premiums which are thousands of dollars, and paying the $2,000 deductible, I still have to bring money with me for a co-pay.”
What part of speech is health care?
Health care ( noun )
Is child care one word?
Is ‘childcare’ one word or two? ‘Childcare’ is typically written as one word when it’s a noun, though ‘child care’ is an acceptable variant.
Is it healthcare or health care Chicago Manual of Style?
The AP would say that health care is two words ; the Chicago Manual of Style, popular in academia, would write that as 2 words, but agree with the premise.
What is the meaning of health care in English?
: the maintaining and restoration of health by the treatment and prevention of disease especially by trained and licensed professionals (as in medicine, dentistry, clinical psychology, and public health)