Introduction to the United States Health Care System

Description from DukeHub

Overview of key health policy issues in the United States. Topics include: (1) sources of morbidity and mortality; (2) access to health care; (3) financing of health care including an overview of how health insurance works, Medicare and Medicaid and why there are uninsured persons and to what effect; (4) health care quality; (5) end-of-life issues and care in advanced stage illness; (6) the role of non-profit versus for-profit ownership of health care facilities and to what effect; (8) long term care and care-giving issues; and (9) the impact of social phenomenon such as income inequality, social class and culture on health care.

Skills

• policy and lawdepartment: HLTHPOL

AI-resilient: 1 of 5 1/5

• No: Physical, lab or field work
• No: Live work with people
• ✓Yes: Judgment someone is accountable for · "policy"
• No: A craft you practice with your hands or body
• No: Small, in-person format

The checks lean on Microsoft Research, Working with AI (2025), which found generative AI applies least to physical work and hands-on work with people. A signal, not a promise. How the score works

More in HLTHPOL

• Immersive Health Policy Experience HLTHPOL 370S
• Children's Complex Care Coalit HLTHPOL 396T-01
• Community Antepartum Patients HLTHPOL 396T-02
• Closing the Gap HLTHPOL 396T-03
• Data Science in Clinical Care HLTHPOL 396T-04
• Shaping Tomorrows Healthcare HLTHPOL 396T-05

All HLTHPOL courses · All of Undergraduate