Discuss the obstacles to and advantages of achieving the two broad goals from the Healthy People 2020 report.

A. Increasing the span of healthy life is one goal.
1. Achieving this goal would require:
a. Reducing the health problems that affect the elderly.
b. Concentrating on some disorders that are not leading causes of mortality, but are leading causes of disability.
2. Obstacles to achieving this goal include:
a. Financing additional health care for a group that already is responsible for a large proportion of health care costs.
b. Finding ways to prevent diseases, beginning as early as adolescence, so that people experience a healthier old age.
B. Reducing health disparities among Americans is the second goal because the United States does a poorer job of dispensing health care to its citizens than any other industrialized country.
1. Achieving this goal would:
a. Provide high-quality health care for more U.S. residents.
b. Boost life expectancy in the United States, making it consistent with that in other industrialized nations.
2. Obstacles to achieving this goal involve removing the health disparities among ethnic groups: poor African Americans and Hispanic Americans have shorter life expectancies and poorer health than European Americans and Asian Americans.
a. Economic factors as well as discrimination may contribute to these ethnic differences.
b. Educational disparities may also contribute to health disparities among Americans.