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US Healthcare 2050
What will US healthcare look like in 2050? According to Getzen (2013), trends in better health will lead to greater need for long-term care and chronic care for the aging population while correspondingly trending toward less acute illnesses (p. 438). Personalized prognostic healthcare will lead to healthier longer lives (Lawrence, 2010). Physicians will become leaders of teams within healthcare organizations rather than the independent practitioners we are familiar with today (Getzen, 2013, p. 438). Thus, the concept of the primary care physician will become a thing of the past (Lawrence, 2010).
The cost of US health care has been steadily increasing for many years causing many Americans to face difficult choices between
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It is projected that the overall US population will increase by 41 percent with the portion aged 65 or older expected to double by 2050, reaching 88.5 million senior citizens (Pallin, Espinola & Camargo, 2014). Aging populations inevitably create spending increases given that older individuals typically consume far more health care than their younger counterparts (Lawewnce, 2010). This aging population will have a greater need for long-term and chronic care as people are also projected to live longer (Getzen, 2013, p. …show more content…
Census predicts that by 2050 roughly 19 percent of the total U.S. workforce will be age 65 years or older. This segment of the labor force is expected to grow by 75 percent over the next forty years (Harrington & Heidkamp, 2013). These demographic trends predict significant employment challenges in the near future. Given that the health care workforce is already older than in many other industries, this sector is particularly vulnerable to the impact of the aging workforce. As these large numbers of older health care providers do retire, the challenge will present in efforts to replace the workforce to current levels (Harrington & Heidkamp,
According to Harry A. Sultz and Kristina M. Young, the authors of our textbook Health Care USA, medical care in the United States is a $2.5 Trillion industry (xvii). This industry is so large that “the U.S. health care system is the world’s eighth
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.
Miller, H. D. (2009). From volume to value: better ways to pay for health care. Health Affairs
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.
In order to make ones’ health care coverage more affordable, the nation needs to address the continually increasing medical care costs. Approximately more than one-sixth of the United States economy is devoted to health care spending, such as: soaring prices for medical services, costly prescription drugs, newly advanced medical technology, and even unhealthy lifestyles. Our system is spending approximately $2.7 trillion annually on health care. According to experts, it is estimated that approximately 20%-30% of that spending (approx. $800 billion a year) appears to go towards wasteful, redundant, or even inefficient care.
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 ...
It is no secret that the current healthcare reform is a contentious matter that promises to transform the way Americans view an already complex healthcare system. The newly insured population is expected to increase by an estimated 32 million while facing an expected shortage of up to 44,000 primary care physicians within the next 12 years (Doherty, 2010). Amidst these already overwhelming challenges, healthcare systems are becoming increasingly scrutinized to identify ways to improve cost containment and patient access (Curits & Netten, 2007). “Growing awareness of the importance of health promotion and disease prevention, the increased complexity of community-based care, and the need to use scarce human healthcare resources, especially family physicians, far more efficiently and effectively, have resulted in increased emphasis on primary healthcare renewal.” (Bailey, Jones & Way, 2006, p. 381).
American people look at their insurance bills, co-pays and drug costs, and can't understand why they continue to increase. The insured should consider all of these reasons before getting upset. In 2004, employee health care premiums increased over 11 percent, four times more than the rate of inflation. In 2003, premiums rose 10.1 percent and in 2002 they rose 15 percent. Employee spending for coverage increased 126 percent between 2000 and 2004. Those increases were lower than expected. (National Coalition on Health Care, 2005, Facts on health care costs). Premiums have risen five times faster than workers wages, on average. If medical spending continues to rise by just two percent more than personal income, by 2040 Medicare and Medicaid would hit 18.5 percent of the gross domestic product, leading the federal deficit to be 20.7 of the gross domestic product. (Melcer, R., 2004, St Louis Post-Dispatch, Rising Costs of healthcare pose huge challenges).
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.
Healthcare professionals want only to provide the best care and comfort for their patients. In today’s world, advances in healthcare and medicine have made their task of doing so much easier, allowing previously lethal diseases to be diagnosed and treated with proficiency and speed. A majority of people in the United States have health insurance and enjoy the luxury of convenient, easy to access health care services, with annual checkups, preventative care, and their own personal doctor ready to diagnose and provide treatment for even the most trivial of symptoms. Many of these people could not imagine living a day without the assurance that, when needed, medical care would not be available to themselves and their loved ones. However, millions of American citizens currently live under these unimaginable conditions, going day to day without the security of frequent checkups, prescription medicine, or preventative medicines that could prevent future complications in their health. Now with the rising unemployment rates due to the current global recession, even more Americans are becoming uninsured, and the flaws in the United States’ current healthcare system are being exposed. In order to amend these flaws, some are looking to make small changes to fix the current healthcare system, while others look to make sweeping changes and remodel the system completely, favoring a more socialized, universal type of healthcare system. Although it is certain that change is needed, universal healthcare is not the miracle cure that will solve the systems current ailments. Universal healthcare should not be allowed to take form in America as it is a menace to the capitalist principle of a free market, threatens to put a stranglehold on for-...
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.
...nted if the healthcare system as a whole reforms to a patient and physician friendly system.
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 Keynesian concept of supply and demand clearly captures the population trends in health care and foreshadows the diminishing sustainability of the current financing structure. Substantial demand for health care services will not be waning anytime in the foreseeable future. The jump from 4.4 million Americans over the age of 85 in 2000 to 6.3 million predicted in 2025 comprises a significant increase in demand for health care (Williams & Torrens, 2008). Accordingly, total health care expenditures grew from 1.2 trillion dollars in 2000 to 2.7 trillion dollars in 2015 (National Center for Health Statistics, 2017).