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- Creators: College of Health Solutions
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
- Status: Published
The United States healthcare system does not perform as well as other countries including Germany and England, despite spending the most money on healthcare. It is well-established that there have been attempts at reform in the U.S. healthcare system multiple times in the past. This research paper describes the health care systems in the U.S., Germany, and England to analyze the strengths to create practical healthcare reform ideas for the U.S. This was done by describing each of the country's health care systems in detail, including the history of each country's health care system, the quality of care, the access to care, and the funding of the health care system. Based on this analysis of these health care systems, recommendations for health care reform are provided for the U.S. with revisions to the Affordable Care Act.
A total of 26 human subjects were used in this study. Each subject was classified as either lean or obese, according to their BMI measurement. First, the subjects underwent an oral glucose tolerance test. Blood samples were taken to measure glucose levels in the blood. After the test subject characteristics for each subject was obtained. These included age, BMI, body fat percentage, fat free mass (FFM), height, total mass, waist circumference, hip circumference, and waist to hip ratio. After the subject characteristics and blood glucose were measured the blood samples taken previously were then centrifuged, and the blood plasma was extracted. The blood plasma was then used to undergo an Insulin ELISA test. After extensive analysis, the Matsuda Index of each subject was obtained. Subjects with a Matsuda value of 6.0 or under were considered insulin resistant while subjects with a Matsuda value higher than 6.0 were considered insulin sensitive. Subjects were also required to submit a dietary record over the course of three days. The food intake was then put into a food processing software which gave a daily average of the macro and micro nutrients for each subject. Both the subject and dietary values were put into a multiple regression with a significance factor of p < 0.5 to see which factors contributed most to the Matsuda value.
It was found that BMI, height, total mass, insulin and fat free mass, all of which were subject characteristics, were considered to be significant. Some of these factors an individual has no control over, such as height and insulin. However other factors such as BMI, total mass and fat free mass can be affected by both a healthy diet and frequent exercise. This study validated that diet and physical activity can greatly influence an individual’s susceptibility to insulin resistance and ultimately T2DM.