Introduction
The saying health is wealth has different meanings. It could mean that healthy people have less medical expenses or that people treasure good health more than money. The goal of a healthy lifestyle is to have a long life and remain disease or cancer free. The United States of America is known as a developed nation and people would assume that it provides its citizens with equal and an adequate medical care. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “America spent more on health care per capita ($8,608) and more on health care as a percentage of its GDP (17.2%), than any other nation in 2011.” This means that the US puts a lot of emphasis on their healthcare compared to any other country in the world. But the reality is the Commonwealth Fund, a private American foundation, ranked the United States of America last in the quality of healthcare compared to the world in 2014. Also, America is ranked as one of the most expensive healthcare providers in the world. The US was compared to countries like Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland.
The rankings prove that the American healthcare system is indeed facing many issues. Some of the major issues are accessibility of healthcare to all, lack of consolidation within the industry, deficiency in technology, lack of data availability and lastly, over dependence on medications by healthcare professionals such as doctors. The issue highlighted in this research is that the doctors are not focusing on promoting and maintaining a healthy lifestyle to prevent chronic conditions in their patients. Instead, their emphasis is only on prescribing medicines as a cure when it is also their duty to spread awareness of eating healthy and exercising to help with disease prevention. This problem is relevant because it suggests that doctors are not