Rising healthcare costs have become a central problem for individuals around the world, specifically residents of the United States, which has caused employers to shift a greater portion of insurance premium costs to their employees. According to an annual poll of employers referenced by the Wall Street Journal, annual insurance premiums rose three percent during the year 2017 which outpaced inflation. A portion of these healthcare costs can be attributed to inefficiencies in the market due to a lack of risk measurement for workers. Presently, the National Association of Heath Underwriters has found that lifestyle choices are accountable for as much as seventy percent of health care spending. Employees who make unhealthy lifestyle choices which include obesity, smoking and excess alcohol consumption require more medical care and are therefore costlier to employers. The CDC website states that each smoker costs an employer an additional $5,128 a year in health costs and lost productivity. In order to contain these costs, employers can utilize various methods which include higher deductibles, higher premium charges and other cost-sharing tactics.
As health insurance costs increase, employees are increasingly eager to maintain their benefits. As a result, workers will bear the incidence of increased premiums because the changes in their healthcare
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If firms do not have some sort of differential to pay for insurance premiums for workers with unhealthy lifestyles, firms might have an incentive to hire underqualified workers as long as they are thin or nonsmokers as presented by The Journal of Health Economics. Employees therefore should pay for higher premiums if their healthcare costs are linked to lifestyle choices because if not done, it could diminish incentives to be healthy and therefore not decrease
The United States is projected to spend nearly 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product on healthcare by 2020.According to a Mckinsey study $447 billion of the 1.7 trillion the U.S. spent on healthcare in 2003 was in excess of what it should have spent based on its wealth. A 1 % increase in the rate of health-spending results in an increase of about $2 trillion in spending on health over the next 10 years.
...ter for obese individuals than for average weight individuals. The healthier workers are, the fewer medical services they use. The five leading causes of death in the U.S., heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes — are directly linked to unhealthy lifestyles. Clearly, encouraging healthful habits presents an opportunity to improve workers’ well being, reduce the need for medical services and help control costs.
“Homelessness can be the cause as well as the result of poor health” (Wise, Emily, Debrody, Corey &ump; Paniucki, Heather, 1999, p.445). This is a reoccurring theme that has existed within the homeless population for decades. While programs to help reduce this constant circle are being put in place all over the country to provide medical services for the homeless to be able to go to, many are still finding that health care needs for individuals as well as homeless communities are not being met. Many studies have been completed that study both the opinion on healthcare by those who have access to sufficient health care and homeless people’s perceptions on health care administration. While many companies are working to provide more personal health care systems, it appears that the larger problem is with a lack of people know about the health care systems that are in place to help them. Companies are trying to advertise more often to inform homeless people that there is health care out there for them.
Health insurance is currently an important issue in the United States. Everyday more and more Americans become uninsured due to job loss and an increase in premiums. These Americans add to the ever growing population of 45.7 million people who are currently uninsured (Bialik). Moreover only 27% of those uninsured are under the age of 65 (NCHC). This is staggering considering most of those who are uninsured have, or soon will, suffer from some sort of illness or injury. As a result they will not be able to afford proper treatment. Insurance premiums can range in cost from fifty dollars per month, to fifteen hundred dollars per month (Kreidler). An individual’s premium is determined by factors they choose as well as other factors looked at by their provider. The cost of health insurance in America varies depending on the controllable factors, like particular insurance policies, and uncontrollable factors, like age.
The steady rise of healthcare costs and the ever increasing cost of health insurance premiums are making it harder and harder for employers to pay healthcare premiums for their employees. In the past, it was almost a given that employers picked up the tab for health insurance coverage. The health coverage was usually exceptional with little or no money paid out of pocket by the individual for the insurance premiums. Those appear to be the “good old days”, with fewer and fewer employers shelling out money for health insurance premiums and demanding a larger percentage to be paid by the employee. Other employers are simply unable to financially provide healthcare coverage for their employees and have stopped all together.
There are several issues concerning the uninsured and underinsured patient population in America. There are many areas of concern the congressional efforts to increase the availability of health insurance, the public image of the insurance industry illustrated by the movie "John Q", the lack of good management tools, and creating health insurance coverage for all low income Americans. Since the number of uninsured Americans has risen to 43 million from 37 million in the flourishing 1990s and could shoot up even more severely if the economy continues to decrease and health care premiums keep increasing (Insurance No Simple Fix, 2001).
There is an ongoing debate on the topic of how to fix the health care system in America. Some believe that there should be a Single Payer system that ensures all health care costs are covered by the government, and the people that want a Public Option system believe that there should be no government interference with paying for individual’s health care costs. In 1993, President Bill Clinton introduced the Health Security Act. Its goal was to provide universal health care for America. There was a lot of controversy throughout the nation whether this Act was going in the right direction, and in 1994, the Act died. Since then there have been multiple other attempts to fix the health care situation, but those attempts have not succeeded. The Affordable Care Act was passed in the senate on December 24, 2009, and passed in the house on March 21, 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 23 (Obamacare Facts). This indeed was a step forward to end the debate about health care, and began to establish the middle ground for people in America. In order for America to stay on track to rebuild the health care system, we need to keep going in the same direction and expand our horizons by keeping and adding on to the Affordable Care Act so every citizen is content.
Healthcare plays an important role in almost every person’s life at one point or another. Many times, one can get caught without, or underinsured and it can be detrimental to their livelihood. With the rising cost of healthcare, it is likely that having a national healthcare policy in place, and as an individual, being able to afford and obtain adequate health insurance has not been required until now. With the new national healthcare plan, it is required for all citizens to obtain and maintain some sort of public or private insurance policy. The rising costs can be attributed to many things. A significant reason for the astronomical cost of health care is because of the staggering amount of uninsured or underinsured individuals receiving medical attention and almost many never paying the bill. Those who do have insurance have seen a gradual increase in their premiums and deductibles to make up for this.
Rising medical costs are a worldwide problem, but nowhere are they higher than in the U.S. Although Americans with good health insurance coverage may get the best medical treatment in the world, the health of the average American, as measured by life expectancy and infant mortality, is below the average of other major industrial countries. Inefficiency, fraud and the expense of malpractice suits are often blamed for high U.S. costs, but the major reason is overinvestment in technology and personnel.
There is no denying the fact that the cost of health care in the United States has been on a constant rise than the wage of the employees that pay to have access to better healthcare. There is the general fear among these employees that if the rising cost of the health care is not brought under control, there will come a time, and some analyst think, the time is already here, when those employees will not be able to afford health care for themselves and their families. This fear of the unknown is particularly evident among those closer to retirement. Employers of labor have for quite sometimes now, been shifting the burden of the high cost of affordable health care to their employees, and that has significantly reduced employee standard of living the past couple of years. Similarly, rising health care costs could also drive up inflation and make U.S.-made goods and services less competitive in international markets in the long run because increasing health care costs might eventually be reflected in higher product prices.
...ue to numerous medical errors. With the amount of medical errors that currently do occur which is a current health care issue it cost the health care billions of dollar each year to fix the mistakes that were made.
Meritage Medical Network said, “It’s estimated that 30% of healthcare spending each year is wasted!” Even with this great amount of waste, the price of healthcare is still rising! This trend has been on since the dawn of health care, always rising! It doesn’t look like it will be going down anytime soon. The future prediction is that health care price will keep rising.
Health debts causes and consequences Debts related to health have existed from a while now. These come from many sources such as disease and condition treatments and the need of supplies for surgeries. Some health insurances hired by patients take care of some percentage coverage, but there are some long term diseases or spontaneous accidents that make this coverage easily be vanished. Therefore, it should be analyzed the source of these debts and the things that may carry possessing them and not be able to pay. Among the causes we can find not proper preparing and accidents that are not predictable or avoidable.
Another large debate in the issues and impacts of obesity is the responsibility of employer’s. Especially for those whose obesity comes from a sedentary lifestyle. Or perhaps need the preventative measures of keeping obesity at bay. A hot topic on the rise is whether or not employers should be mandated to give employees a work-out period in their schedule. The employers could offer employee’s incentives for utilizing resources (a company gym, discounted memberships, and dietician, walking a company track) and by using the resources keep costs low. Though initially it could be costly to take on the responsibility to offer extra incentives to employee’s it could offer long term potential savings. (Villareal, Apovian, Kushner, and Klein 2005) Those whose companies offer various programs and actively engage in them express more happiness, productivity, a greater quality of life, and overall better health. Better health allows for employee’s to serve their employers better. They use less sick pay, keep insurance premiums low, and are more likely to be in tune with their daily job. So while the initial cost may be high, the long term financial gain of a happy, healthy, productive team is hard not to invest in!
Health care has always been an interesting topic all over the world. Voltaire once said, “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” It may seem like health care that nothing gets accomplished in different health care systems, but ultimately many trying to cures diseases and improve health care systems.