In this article, the authors identify the problem of access due to affordability of the curative and transformative therapies including the most recently found Hepatitis C therapy and a gene therapy for the highly rare disease lipoprotein lipase deficiency. The authors provide two approaches such as short-term and long-term approach that would increase the accessibility to transformative drugs. The authors suggest providing health care loans (HCL) to the consumers to help finance the expensive treatments to increase affordability. To make them affordable rapidly they provide a short-term approach which suggests financing HCLs with establishment of the special purpose entity (SPE). The SPE will be financed by a pool of investors who …show more content…
and foreign pricing where U.S. drug prices are among the highest in the world. A key factor that prevents the insurance companies from covering the upfront cost of the expensive treatments is the high rate of policyholders switching from one plan to another due to job changes, relocation, retirement etc. Despite having the methods and financial means to provide care, each day patients fail to receive optimal care due to the current political atmosphere. Lack of health education and engagement in risk behaviors significantly increase the rate of infectious diseases that require expensive curative therapies. On the other hand, if they are left uncured it can pose a significant threat to the public health.
Authors recommend that we implement new financing techniques based on portfolio theory and securitization techniques to finance the HCLs and connect the repayment to ongoing value. Also, they recommend using securitization to increase diversity in the financing pool to help transform a fragmented system into more connected system that works for a common goal of improving healthcare. According to the authors, adapting improved financial methods is no longer a choice rather it has become an urgent necessity.
I consider both proposed models to be valid and credible based on the data provided. I agree with the author’s argument regarding the urgent need to improve
It is no secret that the cost of American healthcare is becoming increasingly more expensive. However, the issue of the rising cost of healthcare and its severity needs to be recognized as a major problem. Health prices are steadily increasing in the United States, and there is no sign of it stopping. Since 1970, spending on American health care has grown 9.8%, which is a rate that is growing faster than the economy (“New Technology”.) Furthermore, health insurance premiums are also increasing at a rate five times faster than American salaries, which makes it difficult for families to afford health care coverage (Zuckerman 28). Therefore, it has become an obligation to address why the cost of American health care is soaring and to seek out a solution to lower the cost. Many would jump to the conclusion that the United States simply charges too much for their medical services, but there are deeper influences that need to be analyzed. The causes of the rising cost of health care are people not using preventive health care, the development of modern technology, and the treatments being overprescribed. A possible solution is to have preventive health care services available in clinics of low-income areas.
As we advance in our healthcare system and continue to find cure for the deadly diseases we are also faced with prescription drug prices rising much faster than they were a few years back. Drug prices are increasing at an unmaintainable rate without any sign of reduction. People who are heavily affected by this rise are mostly elderly citizens and also the poor of this country because they can barely afford these expenses. These people either have no money to pay for their copays or no health insurances at all.
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.
Living in the United States, there is one essential thing you need to have, which is health insurance. Health insurance is a type of insurance that can covers cost of medical and surgical expenses when you need them. Without health insurance, the cost of one single surgery would be a enormous number. But in the United States, there are about 46 million americans are uninsured. To them, the cost of health insurance is too high. In America, the average cost of health insurance per month is about $328 and the minimum wage per hour in here is $7.25(where cite from?). From here, we can conclude that it is too expensive for those people to get sick. So, is the health insurance cost unjustifiably high? The answer is the highly developed technology, waste of health care budget and the free competitor in the health insurance market, caused health insurance’s price to remain so high.
Health care expenses are a never ending headache that create numerous liabilities. Liabilities are created when goods or services are purchased on credit and obtained through short- term and long- term loans. Health care expenses create liabilities such that payments are made late or no payments are made at all. In some cases, the cost of health care expenses are unaffordable resulting in those type of payments. To prevent large health care debt, many individuals seek health insurance. Health insurance is provided by private insurance companies or by the government. It covers health care expenses and provides the necessary health care. Although, health insurance is necessary it can also be very costly.
The cost of health care has been at the forefront of politics for years. It is one of the most talked about topics not just in political venues but also country wide. Every American has an opinion on how our economy can be fixed and they are passionate about health care reform. The price of insurance alone causes many Americans to not have coverage. For those that can afford coverage, the struggle to pay co pays is immensely crippling their bank accounts. Of these burdens on Americans today, the most frightening fact lies in the cost of prescription medications.
Access to quality healthcare is the one of the top stories in international news today. Most countries around the world are finding different ways to control cost and delivery quality healthcare to its populations. Most countries have the difficult task of offering quality healthcare at an affordable price, without crashing the financial market within the countries. With a growing population and an elderly demographic that are living longer, this has caused a strain on healthcare resources that has a high cost on the economy that is limited. In the United States “Universal Healthcare” is a concept that was introduced to Americans since Bill Clinton has been President. Along with the United States, other countries are preparing for a
When it comes to health care, cost is one of the biggest problems. Something needs to be done in order to make it possible for patients, families, and businesses to be able to afford health care. US does not always spend health care dollars in the most productive way. The cost of cancer treatments alone can cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the only way to pay for that is to raise the cost of the insurance to the patients. Cost is defined as the “price” of healthcare. The “price” or cost can come from various places such as, the physician’s bill, the cost of prescriptions, as well as what the employers pay to cover their employees. The cost of treatments, emergency room visits, medicines, the cost of newest technology and etc. is what is making our increase in cost rapidly. The rising costs leads to becoming a financial burden to families, even the ones that have health insurance, which can typically result in individuals not receiving the health services that they need.
Frech cited several keys to the high costs here including marketing by pharmaceutical companies; the incredible number (around 20 percent) of the people who work in the medical field but never come into contact with any patient and the lack of wellness programs and poor lifestyle
Millions of Americans cannot afford healthcare services, and therefore have no financial defense in battling illnesses. Even with the affordable care act in place, there is a constant struggle for many who cannot afford the premiums that come with these insurance policies. "One of the reasons why we have uninsurance in the United States is that it has become increasingly unaffordable to purchase insurance because the cost of care and the premiums for care have gone up at multiples of the rates of increase of wages and of the cost-of-living in the United States" (Blumenthal, 2014)
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.Health care costs are far higher in the United States than in any other advanced nation, whether measured in total dollars spent, as a percentage of the economy, or on a per capita basis. And health costs here have been rising significantly faster
burns through $2,797 more every individual consistently than other industrialized nations, despite the fact that 47 million of those individuals are uninsured so the U.S. spends more is that simply the value we pay for having the free decision of suppliers and driving the trends in therapeutic innovation. Not really because no less than 30 percent of all delivered human services administrations are thought to be pointless on the grounds that they do not make very sick individuals any healthier. As an illustration, we should consider Medicare spending. One study contrasted patients and comparable afflictions in high-spending Medicare areas and low-spending Medicare districts. Those patients in the high-spending ranges, who saw their specialist all the more regularly and spent more days in the health facilities, had an expanded risk of biting the dust when contrasted with patients in the lower-spending territories who had the same ailment. It's as though heading off to the specialist in this nation can make a man significantly more debilitated, maybe on the grounds that a patient runs the danger of experiencing unnecessary treatment that correct only the symptoms and not the disease (PBS,
According the Department of Health and Human Services, total health care spending in the U.S. reached $2.3 trillion in 2008, or $7,681 per person. As a share of GDP, healthcare expenditures set a new record of 16.2 percent. That’s double the 8.1 percent share of GDP in 1975, and it is triple the 5.2 percent share of GDP in 1960. (Perry, 2010) Last year in 2012, total U.S. health care spending hit $2.807 trillion, or $8,948 per person. (Geisel, 2013) Its rate of increase has been relatively low since 2009, at
Healthcare financing is proven to be challenging. A balance between adequate access, acceptable quality and affordable cost are the main objectives of a healthcare system (Paterson, 2014, p. 13). The island of Tekram is finding extremely difficult to achieve a solution to the current crisis of their healthcare system. The objective to this case study is to recommend a new healthcare strategy to island government.
Hepatitis C is a prevalent health care problem. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2016), approximately 2.7-3.9 million of the adult population in the United States is infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Some groups of people are at risk for Hepatitis C infection, including current injection drug users, people who received the blood transfusion before 1992, organ recipients from a donor who tested positive for hepatitis C virus, hemodialysis patients, and children born to a hepatitis C mother (CDC, 2016). Hepatitis C causes embarrassment and isolation from the society. Self-esteem and understanding of the