America 's Healthcare : Chronically Ill

Walter Cronkite, an American broadcast journalist, once stated: “America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.” The structure we use can simply be summarized as capitalistic and inefficient. The United States healthcare system is a constant cycle of an astronomical amount of money wasted on doctors who don’t invest the right amount of care into their patients; however, we need to move healthcare upstream in a way that results in improving health at the start and discarding harmful programs.

The documentary “Money and Medicine,” reveals the essentials of unnecessary health care spending and the policies that intervene with the health care systems. In the beginning of the film, the people being interviewed talked about patients receiving major amounts of unnecessary treatment and that a majority of health care spending is devoted to needless services. Several physicians in the video explained the extreme dangers that are present within health care; along with clarifying that they are paid more when doing harm to their patients and when they do more for them even if it is not beneficial to do so. If the cost of health care continues to rise, health care will become too expensive and unavailable that the U.S. will be put in a financial

The major problem with the health care system in the US, according to David Goldhill, is the system of incentives that puts most of the purchasing power in the hands of insurance companies and the government, while cutting patients out of the equation. From a business point of view, according to Goldhill, the current healthcare system is costing the patient a lot of money and is “killing us”. Goldhill deliberates a much needed healthcare reform after witnessing many errors during his 83-year-old father’s hospitalization and death due to hospital acquired infections. Goldhill’s personal tragedy compelled him to fight for a radical solution for health care reform.

In an eerie parallel, the last eight weeks of this course have been peppered with real life experiences of the healthcare system in America. Specifically, with the treatment and care of my well insured chronically ill mother and underinsured/uninsured entrepreneurial/small business owner brother and sister and the difference in which their healthcare stories are playing out. Yet, this course has also seasoned my perspective of what to expect in the future. Which is “that the current model of healthcare delivery …is not sustainable” (Dieppe & Roe, 2015, p. 22).

The U.S. healthcare framework fails to meet expectations contrasted and different nations on various measurements access, quality, and productivity (Baicker, 2004). The United States spends on healthcare services twice per capita what the normal industrialized country spends, hence elaborating of inefficiencies in management of these services (Baicker, 2004). High U.S. healthcare care spending without similar increases in health results has driven a few specialists to reason that the U.S. healthcare framework is on the level part of the generation bend for healthcare administrations, or maybe past the purpose of consistent losses. An alternate conclusion could be drawn in particular, that the United States is not even on the effective developmental point. When the point of consideration is characterized as the treatment for a given condition, the expense of providing any certain level of consideration is exceedingly variable (Baicker, 2004). Indeed, even within a specified geographic range, the expense of healthcare say, a cardiac arrest, relies on upon the doctor 's healthcare service and facility to which the ambulance brings an individual. It will influence duration spent in the emergency unit; numerous specialists included in treatment, and instances of readmission to the clinic after release.

This week’s article by Liz Welch titled, Physician, Healthy Industry discusses why our health care industry should not be run as a business. The doctor interviewed by Welch is a Boston-based physician, Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle who runs a company called Iora. He addresses the primary care experience including the coding, billing, and copays in our current health care industry. His argument is that the system should not make a physician do what they do not want to do. He states, “I’d seen 40 patients, and had to stay two hours after work to finish up notes, because that’s what these stupid systems make you do” (Welch, 2015, para. 2). Dr. Fernandopulle frustrations are with the paper pushing process that our health care system requires of all physicians, but he decides to focus on the patient and their concerns, rather than the paperwork aspect. The purpose of Dr. Fernandopulle interview was to reduce the rising health care costs and start looking at the patient closely to prevent unwanted and unnecessary emergency room visits.

My biggest concern regarding the future of medicine lies in the unequal access to quality, affordable healthcare. Having worked at two facilities with largely under and/or uninsured patient populations, I have directly witnessed the consequences suffered by those lacking insurance secondary to high costs. Without adequate coverage, regular appointments are not scheduled, symptoms are not addressed, and previously treatable illnesses transform into illnesses that are much less manageable and potentially even life threatening. Although significant strides have been made via the Affordable Care Act to reduce the outstanding numbers of uninsured Americans, an estimated thirty million still remain subject to out of pocket expenses should they fall

Healthcare is a necessary part of life. Having an accessible and high quality healthcare system defines the quality of life in a country. Healthcare protects, treats, and supports individuals’ physical and well-being. However, there is a growing trend in which profits are superseding the importance of patients. Healthcare in the United States has gone from public welfare to private funding. While healthcare should be considered a right for all, for-profit healthcare businesses are taking the focus off of what is best for the patient and refocusing on what is best for the bottom-line. It is time for America’s healthcare system to put the patient first.

This study has also covered the weaker aspects of the prevailing American healthcare system. The financial basis of healthcare improvement lay in enhanced business savvy on the part of the administrators and providers of healthcare. It is the lack of healthcare and business savvy that is impeding the American citizens from accessing adequate health. The American healthcare system involves socialized and privatized healthcare. The socialized healthcare system is inefficient due to lack of financial balance to support adequate care for every American.

In The Truth About Health Care, David Mechanic the director of the Institute for Health explains how health care in America has evolved in ways that favor economic, professional, and political interest over the patients. Mechanic states “The United States spends significantly more per person on health care than any other country but the evidence shows that care is often poor and inappropriate” (27). Money has played a big role in medical care and the quest for profits has become dominant, making meaningful reforms difficult to achieve. This proves that despite expenditures of over 1.9 trillion dollars, health care services remain fragmented and uncoordinated. Mechanic examines the strengths and weaknesses of our system and how it was evolved. “The failure to provide universal health insurance is a long-standing theme in American health policy discussions and an embarrassment for the best financed health system in the world” (49). Loss of public trust in medicine, the tragic state of long-term care, and the relationship of mental health to health care are areas often neglected.

The United Stated has the costliest medicinal services among other created nations. As indicated by information aggregated by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the U.S. spends more on human services, an expected $9,000 per individual in 2016. (Per) The usage of the Affordable Care Act saw a decline of uninsured from 16.6% out of 2013 to 10.4% by 2016 yet 28.2 million non-elderly grown-ups in 2016 were still without medical coverage scope (Key) Even with the high dollars spent and medical coverage commercial centers settled, a great many Americans still don't have medical coverage scope.

The American Health Care system to say the least is wasteful, bloated, and generally inefficient and therefore in dire need for immediate review. This has largely been as a result of factors such as costs, poor investment return for outlays, inequitably distribution, and being based on anachronistic business model geared at treating diseases more than promoting wellness. The figures are all there to see why a radical surgery of the health care reforms has been long overdue.

Nowadays, the health care system in America is so dysfunctional and so messed up that Americas have to travel abroad to third world countries to have surgeries done just to live a little longer and pay a little less because they feel reaped off by the U.S. health care system. Being reaped off by the drug companies, insurance companies, and their well-paid executives. And lets include the doctors who are taking money from the sick just to pursue profits. You can see this when doctors who pull up in Mercedes into the hospital parking lot and most of them have their own parking space as well. But, yet health care could be good because we have the great doctors, great hospitals, great scientist, great medicine, and great technology but it’s being

Financing the United States (U.S.) health care system is complicated and difficult at best. The role policy makers and health care professionals play in the reform and restructuring of the U.S. health care system is very important. The overarching consideration of supply and demand in the U.S. health care system relies on a workforce, financing, and cost of delivering quality healthcare to the U.S. population (Knickman & Kover, 2015). To improve overall quality of care, healthcare providers and policy makers have to look at how services are going to be structured in the future. In this essay we will be exploring how health care services can be financed and at what level: government, state, local or private, is there a way to deliver cost effective and accessible heath care, and consider the ethical dilemmas related to achieving quality, accessible, national health care.

Healthcare is fundamentally different from other businesses because it is concerned with the management and benefitting of life against the threat of death. There are many types of business that can be said to be concerned with the consumer’s overall quality of life, which may be tied to the healthcare industry; but avoiding the threat of death (and therefore, the emergence of fatal health problems enroute to death) is healthcare’s primary concern. It has a social, political, and ethical obligation to the average citizen which no other business can have.