Health Care Spending: Article Analysis
After researching a few reasons why health care is rising, it all came down to the industry exploring new medical technologies. It occurred to me that this should be a good thing because better technology means more people can be treated with better care. However, an increase in medical technology will become more expensive. It can tend to cost more than older versions of treatment. Nevertheless, the total cost is still a function of the amount of people that are receiving treatment for a condition. The rise in a treated-case could reflect improvements in medical technology that will allow treatment to a particular condition. According to the article “Which Medical Conditions Account for the Rise in Health Care Spending?”, several studies
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wanted to address the issue of what was driving the health care spending so high. They took a study to track changes over time by certain medical conditions. They carefully broke down the change, by medical conditions, into changes in treated frequency, how much it would cost, and the population growth.
In order to gather their data, they decided to take an analytic approach to estimate the different nominal spending in health care. The data collected gathered from a study from a survey called National Medical Expenditure Survey in 1987 and another survey in 2000 called Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The NMES helped to survey 34,459 people, and the 2000 MEPS surveyed over 25,096 people. This information contained both national samples of U.S noninstitutionalized population. It included information such as the spending of the services, the patient demographics, insurance coverage, and self- reported of their medical circumstances. Both of the surveys collected detailed information on the respondent’s report of their own condition and anything that measure their health status. When a respondent reported a medical event, they were ask to describe their purpose to why they needed to go to a physician’s office. The information then can be professionally coded into ICD-9 codes, which can be found into the International Classification of Disease. It was interesting to read about what they found in their study methods because they found out that most of their patients were associated with multiple conditions. They had patients that would seek an existing heart condition such as hypertension. This counted as double- count with the spending with the medical conditions. They were able to study the results and calculated in the five most expensive conditions which including heart disease, mental disorders, cancer, trauma, and pulmonary disorders. This accounted for the overall change in the spending between the years in between 1987 and 2000. According to the chart they had included in the article, it presented that mental disorders doubles, heart conditions such as asthma and upper and lower respiratory diseases had increased by 50 percent. The results concluded that “nominal health care spending the noninstitutionalized population increased by $314 billion, just 5.5 percent per year- between 1987 and 2000” (Health Affairs 2). I think when you look of how much money these medical conditions cause the health care to rise up, your first glance is that it seems truly “wasteful”. One thing that I learned analyzing this study was that with the use of the technology with heart disease- such as the new drugs and the different approaches. The death rates with people associated with this medical condition were going down. It is important to track our health care spending but they provide little information for policymakers because we are not sure whether additional spending is worth it.
The big question about health care spending is “Do prevention or treatment services save money”. According to recent articles in the Washington Post and Newsweek, there was research that had been published and reported that most of the measures that are taken to prevent disease does not save money necessarily. They actually found out in their research that many of the presidential candidates advocate the use of the preventive services and they try to convince people that it is a cost saving device. It is simply misguiding and it sets false expectations for curing the U.S health care system. An important thing to consider in this issue is that many people have the mentality that “an once of prevention is work a pound of cure”? At first it seems right that the U.S should spend money on treatments such as preventive services and medical treatments. However, it can get expensive for all these services so in order to decrease spending, people should be encouraged to be more cost effective with ways to to achieve a population health.
As far as reducing the cost in the health care, one of the main thing to do is to do: cut waste.
It is a basic strategy for survival and included in a lot of industries today to help keep process for products and services. There is a ton of potential to reduce the waste in health care. There are five categories that show how the total cost of waste are used both for Medicare and Medicaid. The first one would be failure of care delivery, it includes the waste that comes with the lack of poor execution for example, patient safety systems and care practices that have been shown to be effective. It results in injuries that patients have and worse clinical outcomes. According to the article “Eliminating Waste in US Health Care”, they have already estimated that this category represented between $102 billion and $154 billion for wasteful spending. The second thing they can do to reduce spending is to have better care coordination. It becomes a waste when patients fall through boards in fragmented care. It results in complications, causes hospital readmissions, and also declines in functional status. This occurs especially for the chronically ill, for care coordination is a big essential for function and health. They estimated that this category wastes between $25 billion and $45 billion. Overtreatment would be the third reason that the health care is increasing. Patients are wanting their own preferences when it comes to that they want. Examples include the overuse of antibiotics and use of surgery when wasting is actually the smarter choice, Also, people want unwanted ICU at the end of life instead they prefer hospice and home care. Increased spending also falls back on the accreditation agencies and payers as well. It is because they sometimes create inefficient or misguided rules. An example would be if payers fail to standardize certain forms, therefore prolonging consuming limited physician time and it causes long billing procedures. The fifth and last problem would
be the fraud and abuse, there are people who try to use fake bills and run scams, and also from the blunt procedures of strict regulations that everyone faces because of the misbehaviors of some. It is clear that there is some issues of why health care is rising. However it is a challenge to reduce health care, the only thing that we can really do is track our spending’s efficiently and spend wisely on what is really needed.
wanted to address the issue of what was driving the health care spending so high. They took a study to track changes over time by certain medical conditions. They carefully broke down the change, by medical conditions, into changes in treated frequency, how much it would cost, and the population growth.
In order to gather their data, they decided to take an analytic approach to estimate the different nominal spending in health care. The data collected gathered from a study from a survey called National Medical Expenditure Survey in 1987 and another survey in 2000 called Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The NMES helped to survey 34,459 people, and the 2000 MEPS surveyed over 25,096 people. This information contained both national samples of U.S noninstitutionalized population. It included information such as the spending of the services, the patient demographics, insurance coverage, and self- reported of their medical circumstances. Both of the surveys collected detailed information on the respondent’s report of their own condition and anything that measure their health status. When a respondent reported a medical event, they were ask to describe their purpose to why they needed to go to a physician’s office. The information then can be professionally coded into ICD-9 codes, which can be found into the International Classification of Disease. It was interesting to read about what they found in their study methods because they found out that most of their patients were associated with multiple conditions. They had patients that would seek an existing heart condition such as hypertension. This counted as double- count with the spending with the medical conditions. They were able to study the results and calculated in the five most expensive conditions which including heart disease, mental disorders, cancer, trauma, and pulmonary disorders. This accounted for the overall change in the spending between the years in between 1987 and 2000. According to the chart they had included in the article, it presented that mental disorders doubles, heart conditions such as asthma and upper and lower respiratory diseases had increased by 50 percent. The results concluded that “nominal health care spending the noninstitutionalized population increased by $314 billion, just 5.5 percent per year- between 1987 and 2000” (Health Affairs 2). I think when you look of how much money these medical conditions cause the health care to rise up, your first glance is that it seems truly “wasteful”. One thing that I learned analyzing this study was that with the use of the technology with heart disease- such as the new drugs and the different approaches. The death rates with people associated with this medical condition were going down. It is important to track our health care spending but they provide little information for policymakers because we are not sure whether additional spending is worth it.
The big question about health care spending is “Do prevention or treatment services save money”. According to recent articles in the Washington Post and Newsweek, there was research that had been published and reported that most of the measures that are taken to prevent disease does not save money necessarily. They actually found out in their research that many of the presidential candidates advocate the use of the preventive services and they try to convince people that it is a cost saving device. It is simply misguiding and it sets false expectations for curing the U.S health care system. An important thing to consider in this issue is that many people have the mentality that “an once of prevention is work a pound of cure”? At first it seems right that the U.S should spend money on treatments such as preventive services and medical treatments. However, it can get expensive for all these services so in order to decrease spending, people should be encouraged to be more cost effective with ways to to achieve a population health.
As far as reducing the cost in the health care, one of the main thing to do is to do: cut waste.
It is a basic strategy for survival and included in a lot of industries today to help keep process for products and services. There is a ton of potential to reduce the waste in health care. There are five categories that show how the total cost of waste are used both for Medicare and Medicaid. The first one would be failure of care delivery, it includes the waste that comes with the lack of poor execution for example, patient safety systems and care practices that have been shown to be effective. It results in injuries that patients have and worse clinical outcomes. According to the article “Eliminating Waste in US Health Care”, they have already estimated that this category represented between $102 billion and $154 billion for wasteful spending. The second thing they can do to reduce spending is to have better care coordination. It becomes a waste when patients fall through boards in fragmented care. It results in complications, causes hospital readmissions, and also declines in functional status. This occurs especially for the chronically ill, for care coordination is a big essential for function and health. They estimated that this category wastes between $25 billion and $45 billion. Overtreatment would be the third reason that the health care is increasing. Patients are wanting their own preferences when it comes to that they want. Examples include the overuse of antibiotics and use of surgery when wasting is actually the smarter choice, Also, people want unwanted ICU at the end of life instead they prefer hospice and home care. Increased spending also falls back on the accreditation agencies and payers as well. It is because they sometimes create inefficient or misguided rules. An example would be if payers fail to standardize certain forms, therefore prolonging consuming limited physician time and it causes long billing procedures. The fifth and last problem would
be the fraud and abuse, there are people who try to use fake bills and run scams, and also from the blunt procedures of strict regulations that everyone faces because of the misbehaviors of some. It is clear that there is some issues of why health care is rising. However it is a challenge to reduce health care, the only thing that we can really do is track our spending’s efficiently and spend wisely on what is really needed.