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Causes of high health care costs in the us essay
Should the government provide healthcare
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Health care is one of the most important amenities the world acquires. Without health care, where would the population be? The human species would gradually decline tremendously if the world lacked health care, health care systems, and health insurance. The main goal of a health care system is to provide people with health care services at a logical and efficient rate while also maintaining a level of quality for the patient. Each country has its own advantages and disadvantages to its health care system including the way it chooses to finance health care. What works for one country may not necessarily be efficient for another country. Some believe that if reform took place, health care systems around the world will be more efficient if they …show more content…
Group insurance has tax advantages when the employee’s employer provides them with insurance. People also may choose to insure themselves with “self-insurance” by paying directly out-of-pocket and managing their money to prepare for risk. Employers take on great risk to insure employees by providing them with the health care benefits. However, there is no insurance premium tax on employers (Self-Insurance Institute of America, 2012). So if all goes well, employers do not lose money. There is also individual private insurance where the cost is based on the individual’s health (Shi & Singh, 2015). Individual private insurance plans provide people with a variety of plans to choose from with many options of types of care able to be received. Usually when a person has private insurance he or she has to pay minimum co-payments to his or her provider while the rest is covered at the time of visit. However, some plans do not have co-payments and deductibles, but the person may be paying a higher annual cost for insurance. All of these options give the United States citizens freedom to choose what type of health insurance plan they want, without being automatically assigned to …show more content…
The United States spends twice as much on health care than France through expenditures according to Ed Dolan who says that the French spend “11.2% on GDP, compared with 16% in the United States” (Dolan, 2011). Expenditures are increased by expansion of health insurance and increase in health insurance premiums (Shi & Singh, 2015). People in the United States make more profit than in France, but it is still imperative that the U.S tries to solidify its expenditures for the
Firstly, if all countries were to adopt the universal health care system the world’s death rate would de...
Access to healthcare provides financial stability by assuring people that they will not be financially destroyed by injury or illness. Additionally, when people can afford regular medical care they tend to avoid chronic problems and financial stress. In a study provided by the American Medical Students Association, researchers reviewed the costs and benefits of universal health care. They came to the conclusion, after reviewing other articles and statistics from multiple sources, that, “The annual cost of diminished health and shorter life spans of Americans without insurance is $65-$130 billion.” (Chua 5) This comes from people not having adequate health care and then losing their jobs because they...
The author includes that there would be no way to pay for the system and then lists logical reasons as of why paying for the health care system would fail. The author also includes that creating a universal health care system would cause unemployment to those who are employed in the insurance industry, appealing to his readers with pathos. Finally, the author argues that universal health care would dramatically decrease the quality of health care because more patients would be going in to see the small amount of doctors that are in the US, causing the system to get backed
On a global scale, the United States is a relatively wealthy country of advanced industrialization. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is among the costliest, spending close to 18% of gross domestic product (GDP) towards funding healthcare (2011). No universal healthcare coverage is currently available. United States healthcare is currently funded through private, federal, state, and local sources. Coverage is provided privately and through the government and military. Nearly 85% of the U.S. population is covered to some extent, leaving a population of close to 48 million without any type of health insurance. Cost is the primary reason for lack of insurance and individuals foregoing medical care and use of prescription medications.
Universal health care refers to any system of health care managed by the government. The health care system may cover different programs including government run hospitals and health organizations and programs targeted at providing health care. Many developed countries such as Canada and United Kingdom have embraced universal health care with the United States being the only exception. The present U.S health care system has often been considered inefficient in terms of cost control as millions of Americans remain uncovered. This has made it the subject of a heated debate characterized by people who argue that the country requires a kind of socialized system that will permit increased government participation. Others have tended to support privatized health care, or a combined model of private and universal health care that will permit private companies to offer health care for a specific fee. Universal healthcare has numerous advantages that remain hidden from society. First, the federal government can apply economies of scale in managing health facilities which would reduce health care expenses. Second, all unnecessary expenses would be eliminated by requiring all states to bring together all the insurance companies into a single entity whose mandate would be to provide health insurance to all people. Lastly, increased government participation will guarantee quality care, improve access to medical services and address critical problems relating to market failure.
Despite the established health care facilities in the United States, most citizens do not have access to proper medical care. We must appreciate from the very onset that a healthy and strong nation must have a proper health care system. Such a health system should be available and affordable to all. The cost of health services is high. In fact, the ...
While most countries around the world have some form of universal national health care system, the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, does not. There are much more benefits to the U.S. adopting a dorm of national health care system than to keep its current system, which has proved to be unnecessarily expensive, complicated, and overall inefficient.
The implementation of a universal health care system in the United States is an important challenge that needs to be overcome. There are numerous amount of editorial that argue on both sides of the debate. Some people argue that a universal health care system would bring costs down and increase access to care while others argue that a universal health care system would be too expensive and reduce the quality of care. The correct answer requires intensive understanding and economics to overcome, the arguments must be examined for a proper answer.
A country’s health care system refers to all the institutions, programs, personnel, procedures, and the resources that are used to meet the health needs of its population. Health care systems vary from one country to another, depending on government policies and the health needs of the population. Besides, health care programs are flexible in the sense that they are tailored to meet health needs as they arise. Among the stakeholders in the formulation of a country’s health care system are governments, religious groups, non-governmental organizations, charity organizations, trade/labor unions, and interested individuals (Duckett, 2008). These entities formulate, implement, evaluate, and reform health services according to the needs of the sections of the population they target.
An issue that is widely discussed and debated concerning the United States’ economy is our health care system. The health care system in the United States is not public, meaning that the states does not offer free or affordable health care service. In Canada, France and Great Britain, for example, the government funds health care through taxes. The United States, on the other hand, opted for another direction and passed the burden of health care spending on individual consumers as well as employers and insurers. In July 2006, the issue was transparency: should the American people know the price of the health care service they use and the results doctors and hospitals achieve? The Wall Street Journal article revealed that “U.S. hospitals, most of them nonprofit, charged un-insured patients prices that vastly exceeded those they charged their insured patients. Driving their un-insured patients into bankruptcy." (p. B1) The most expensive health care system in the world is that of America. I will talk about the health insurance in U.S., the health care in other countries, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and my solution to this problem.
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.
The U.S. expends far more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet we get fewer benefits, less than ideal health outcomes, and a lot of dissatisfaction manifested by unequal access, the significant numbers of uninsured and underinsured Americans, uneven quality, and unconstrained wastes. The financing of healthcare is also complicated, as there is no single payer system and payment schemes vary across payors and providers.
With the United Nations listing health care as natural born right and the escalating cost of health care America has reached a debatable crisis. Even if you do have insurance it's a finical strain on most families.
The US health system has both considerable strengths and notable weaknesses. With a large and well-trained health workforce, access to a wide range of high-quality medical specialists as well as secondary and tertiary institutions, patient outcomes are among the best in the world. But the US also suffers from incomplete coverage of its population, and health expenditure levels per person far exceed all other countries. Poor measures on many objective and subjective indicators of quality and outcomes plague the US health care system. In addition, an unequal distribution of resources across the country and among different population groups results in poor access to care for many citizens. Efforts to provide comprehensive, national health insurance in the United States go back to the Great Depression, and nearly every president since Harry S. Truman has proposed some form of national health insurance.
As of 2013 data, the US per capita government expenditure was $4307 while total per capita expenditure on health spending was $9146, which is 17.1 percent of the GDP (2013) for the total expenditure on health. The annual rate of growth in per capita government spending on healthcare has been roughly 5.1 percent over the past thirty years (WHO, 2015). This rate of spending on health care growing faster than the economy for many years creates challenges ...