Ineffective Health Care

America has one of the most inefficient and ineffective health care system in the world as a developed nation. On average, America continuously spends more on healthcare than any other nation. Most nations spend about 10%-11% of their GDP on healthcare while America spends a whopping 17.1%. Although our expenditure is extremely high, the quality of health is not rising at the same rate. Compared to other developed nations were are lagging behind in terms of quality and pricing of healthcare for our citizens. As the job of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, we should aim to lower prices for our citizens while keeping our healthcare industry thriving. While focusing on improving our healthcare system, we should also aim to expand
There is an individual mandate which requires all Americans to be covered by health insurance or pay a penalty tax. The individual mandate is in place to pull in a more healthier demographic into the healthcare pool. The healthier demographic will lower the prices for health services for sick people. Sick and elderly people tend to use the most money out of the private health companies so healthy people are needed to help make a profit for the companies. Although healthy and young people generally do not want to use their own money to keep the less fortunate, they should keep in mind that one day they will become elderly or sick and will need affordable health care. The individual mandate is necessary to keep healthcare affordable for the unwell and should not be repealed out of the act. The other mandate put in from the act is the employee mandate. This mandate states that business are required to give their employees healthcare if they have 50 or more full-time employees. This is generally applied to big businesses but it is difficult to account for the amount of employees. This is because the amount of hours for each employees sometimes fluctuate and businesses can cut hours or people to avoid this mandate. Due to the difficulty and ineffectiveness of this mandate, I am open to changes of this mandate. A solution to this
To clarify, I am not looking to have universal healthcare for America completely but to simply have more people covered by using examples from other countries. An example of a nation with a more successful healthcare system is our neighbor, Canada. America and Canada used to have similar expenditure on healthcare at around 7.5% of their GDP on health care up until 1971. Since then, America’s spending on healthcare has rose exponentially while the quality of healthcare does not compare to Canada’s. One of the main reason why Canada’s health care is succeeding and why America’s system is failing the the role of federal regulation. Unlike America, Canada’s government oversees their drug distribution and marketing. Because of the federal regulation, Canada is able to control the prices to an appropriate level for their citizens unlike America. In America, drug prices can be placed on the market without the federal government’s interference. Added along with Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers (PBMs), the federal government has no way to control the prescription drugs’ prices. On the other hand, Canada has a judicial body to determine the prices of drugs called the The Patented Medicines Prices Review Board (PMPRB). The review board is able to determine the prices of drugs to a reasonable price for the citizen. Because of this review board,