The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss the current level of national healthcare expenditures and to determine if we as Americans are spending too much on healthcare. The author of this paper will provide examples and solutions where we as a nation should add or cut from the healthcare expenditures. This paper will also detail how the general public's healthcare needs are being paid for, the biggest economic healthcare challenge, why the challenge should be addressed, and how this challenge to be financed.…
For more than 30 years health-care costs have been growing 2% faster than the overall economy. The cause of the rising in costs is attributed to the use of new medical technology and the aging of the population…
To conclude, in the last decade health care cost has risen so drastically in the United States to the point it has become a burden to families who simply trying to live and make a productive living. And the arrival of Obamacare infuriated coverage providers and health care providers to the point that lead the quality of care to dissipate. I tyrant was created in the healthcare system that wields a mighty weapon of capitalistic influence over our elected leaders. The name of this giant is called third party payors, and the weapon is campaign contributions. The cost is steadily rising with no end in…
Dr. Don Berwick, Head of Medicare/Medicaid 2010-2011 whom talks about how unsustainable the healthcare system is. We’re spending almost twice as much in America as any other country on earth. Yearly, we have been spending $2.7 trillion in healthcare. The average per capita cost of healthcare in the developed world is about $3,000, but in the United States, it was around $8,000 annually, more than double. Due to these astronomical amounts, healthcare has not become affordable anymore. Insurance companies are raising their rates they are charging for premiums, covering less on patient care, which in turns takes even more money out of our pockets because we now not only have to pay the premiums, but are now left with the portion of the care given that we must pay for out of our pockets.…
Our Healthcare system is clearly business based according to the article “Cost Conundrum” and on the movie “Escape Fire”. In the movie it had an impacting story of an older lady who had heart problems where she went to a doctor and they were going to charge her thousands of dollars were later she went to a different doctor and they charged her a couple hundred dollars for t he same procedure. I couldn’t believe that in a different office she would get the same procedure done for a lot cheaper than in the other doctor’s office. Also, it surprised me how the medical staff are giving all these medications to our soldiers were they are clearly abusing the medication and taking much more than they should. I was really happy to see that later the soldier who was overdosing on medications decided to stop and later tried a different form of medication of acupuncture. Although overdosing on medication is a problem in our country it is not the biggest one in our healthcare. Our healthcare system is the one that is collapsing. Our healthcare system is not like it was many years ago, our healthcare system is market based and doctors don’t focus on quality care on their patients and rather view them as dollar signs. In the article “Cost Conundrum” it states that McAllen is one of the most expensive healthcare markets in the country, many are unsure why it spends more per capita but it states that because the people there are obese and have cardiovascular diseases and fall under the poverty line. In the article it states “the way to practice medicine has changed completely before it was about how to do a good job, now it’s about how much will you benefit”. I clearly agree to this statement because I have gone through this experience with my father. He was diagnosed with diabetes at a late stage in which it caused a retina detachment on his left eye. When he was diagnosed I would…
Health care costs have become a major issue in the United States, both socially and politically. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 50.7 million people, or nearly one in six U.S. residents, were uninsured in 2009 (Kaiser Health News, 2010).This is because the high cost of health care has driven the cost of insurance out of the reach of many Americans. Contributing factors to the continuing increase in the cost of health care are the generally unhealthy…
health care system is dysfunctional and can no longer continue as it currently operates. With or without Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is a need for a deep change. The United States spends more money on health care because a nation is less healthy on the average than the rest of the developed world. The system is dysfunctional and ACA is fast-tracking the process of changes that will be faced by the economic and business challenges by health care organizations. The required adjustments to healthcare organizations operating budgets and methodologies for delivering medicine may become a big issue. Health care organizations will have to go from volume-based reimbursement in medicine based on the number of procedures done or patients seen to a value-based system that will give the same money for every patient regardless of the procedure performed. Health care organizations may have lower income since they will treat more patients. They may face cost-pressure factors such as the overall cost of medical care and the increased incidence of chronic disease, cost transparency and reference pricing, increased government role in paying for care, increased coverage and limited highly skilled medical workforce There is a prediction that forty million more people will be covered nationally, at reimbursement rates below the cost of providing that care (Adams et al.,…
For the past decades, politicians and insurance companies could carelessly proclaim that the United States had the best healthcare system in the world, but as its major deficiencies have become more apparent many people have found it harder to accept this claim. It is reported that around 59 million Americans are without health insurance and are aware that our health care system does not work for everyone. This has caused a growing recognition that the major problems of rising costs and lack of access constitute a real crisis. However, the search solutions have not been easy or clear cut. The problems of our health care system have been responded to with various makeshift solutions rather than analyzing the system itself as a whole to take…
Finding the Money for Healthcare Reform, written by Mark Hyman, M.D. (Hyman, 2009), provides a realistic perspective that the current healthcare reform model only focuses on lowering the cost for healthcare services and not improving the quality of health for patients. Hyman (2009) argues that if quality of health and lifestyle intervention are key focal points of healthcare reform, the burden of healthcare expense would automatically be lowered due to less chronic illness and better health outcomes (Hyman, 2009). “By improving the quality of our health and focusing on health creation and improved health outcomes, the sinking ship of healthcare can be righted, and the behaviors of physicians and healthcare institutions will shift from doing more things (volume) to doing the right things (quality)” (Hyman, 2009, p. 20).…
The U.S. devotes a much larger share of its national income to health care than any other country in the world. However, the gross over-spending has not yielded the healthiest population (OECD Health data, 2009). Our economy is continually growing at a lesser rate than healthcare spending. The need to restrain this unsustainable growth in health care costs is often overlooked in favor of reform focused on expanding access to care. Attention must be focused on restructuring the payment process with the goal of reducing costs without sacrificing quality.…
Today, the United States has what many consider to be the worst health care system in the world. The United States has the most expensive system as it accounts for nearly 17.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (The World Factbook, 2013). This amounts to a cost of $8608 per person (Health Expenditure per Capita, 2013). The extreme cost of health care make it the leading cause of bankruptcy throughout the United States, and the reason why there are over 48.6 million people who are uninsured with no access to health care at all (Howard, Access and Underserved). This high cost has not translated…
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, "health care expenses in the United States rose from $1,106 per person in 1980 ($255 billion overall) to $6,280 per person in 2004 ($1.9 trillion overall). During this period, health care costs grew faster than the economy as a whole" (2006). With the aging population and the fast growing pace of new medical ideas, this trend is probably going to continue. The facilities under attack to develop strategies to reduce or contain costs consider whether the efforts should be targeted mostly across the entire health care system or more narrowly at specific areas or aspects of care, such as in hot spot…
Without a doubt healthcare costs are rising out of control. Not one of us are happy with the increases, but we have to understand what the reasons are for the increases in healthcare. American people look at their insurance bills, co-pays and drug costs, and do not understand why they continue to increase. The insured should consider all reasons behind the increase before getting upset. In 2004, employer health care premiums increased over 11 percent, four times more than the rate of inflation. In 2003, premiums rose 10.1 percent and in 1002 they rose 15 percent. Employee spending for coverage increased 126 percent between 2000 and 2004. These increases were lower than expected. The site to look up information on the cost of health care coverage and the breakdown on the cost is (National Coalition on Health Care, Facts on health care costs). Premiums have risen five times faster than workers’ wages, if medical spending continues to rise by just two percent more than a person’s personal income, by 2040 Medicare and Medicaid will rise 8.4 percent of gross domestic product this year’s 15.6 percent by 2040, according to Congressional Budget Office projections. If all government programs stay at the same size relative to the economy, the budget will grow from 19.9 percent of GDP in 2003 to 27.1 percent by 2040, (http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/tbb-0306-15.pdf). There are huge impacts of the rising costs of healthcare. Many people cannot afford health insurance today and struggle to pay for their medical needs. Of the families that do have health coverage, 50 percent are concerned about having to pay more for the coverage in the future, while 42 percent fear they will not be able to afford coverage at all if the rate increase keep s going the way it is. This leads to believe one of the reasons for health care cost increases: cost sharing or cost shifting. When an individual or a family does not have insurance, and cannot…
There have been numerous failed attempts to reform the United States healthcare system over the years. However, the most recent attempt that has been implemented is the Affordable Care Act, under the Obama Administration. As a result, since 2010 changes have been implemented to reform the United States healthcare industry, which affects the insurers, providers, and the subscribers in different ways. Consequently, the Affordable Care Act does not have full support from everyone and it faces numerous challenges (Bodenheimer & Grumbach, 2012). Overall, it is estimated that 2.6 trillion dollars is spent on healthcare in the United States each year (Van Gorder & Topol, 2012). Therefore, it is essential to acknowledge the inflation in healthcare…
The structure of the U.S heath care system is certainly a topic greatly debated. Whether it is discussing the cost of health care, poor outcomes, shortages in health care workers, underutilization of other health care workers, the lack of access to care, or growing demand by consumers for health care that offers choice, quality, convenience, affordability and personalized care. It is not a secret that the United States spends more money than any other nation on health care, but only ranks 34th in the world in life expectancy and has higher mortality rates in infants than any other nation that is developed.…