Cost, Access And Quality

Health care spending in the United States of America as a percentage of the economy has reached astonishing heights, equating to 17.7 percent. This number is shocking when compared to other counties; in Australia health care is 8.9 percent, in United Kingdom 9.4 percent, in Canada 11.2 percent. If the American health care system were to hypothetically become its own economy, it would be the fifth-largest in the world. While these statistics sound troubling, they lead us to look for answers about the problems surrounding our system. The first health insurance company was created in the 1930s to give all American families an equal opportunity for hospital care and eventually led to a nationwide economic and social controversy that erupted in the 1990s and continued to be shaped by the government, insurance companies, doctors, and American citizens. In this paper, I will go in to detail about the various opinions regarding the controversy, the history behind health insurance companies, and the main dilemmas brought out by the health care crisis. Greedy insurance companies combined with high costs of doctor visits and pharmaceutical drugs or the inefficient hospitals all over America can only describe the beginning to this in depth crisis. Recently, the United States health care industry has become know for the outrageous costs of insurance models, developments of various social and health services programs, and the frequent changes in medicinal technology.

The lucrative healthcare companies in America have created an immeasurable gap between good healthcare only being for the privileged upper class Americans which has left a horrible effect on the middle and lower class Americans. As modern medicine achieves new heights, the prices of healthcare seem to tread right behind maintaining an unbroken pattern that American classes have grown accustomed to over the past few decades of paying more for less. Leaving many Americans uninsured, underinsured, or even in debt. In a speech Bernie Sanders a U.S. Senator from Vermont spoke at a presidential campaign October of 2015 which he discussed the unruly problematic healthcare trend of price gouging, that is the medical industry getting the most it can from American citizens. In a blog Bernie Sanders states that “46 million Americans today have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments” (Sanders). 18,000 Americans die every year from preventable illnesses because they cannot cover the cost and don’t go to the doctor when they should. Sanders summed this situation up with this “Health Care is a Right, Not a Privilege” (Sanders). After researching the issue of healthcare, I have come to the conclusion that the American healthcare system is disintegrating due to the ravenousness of modern medical industries, first I will discuss a few reasons to why the healthcare system is failing the modern American

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.

I will compare the current health care system with the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that became law on March 23, 2010.   The current system, which is being phased out between 2011 and 2018 is increasingly inaccessible to many poor and lower-middle-class people. About 47 million Americans lack health insurance, an increase of more than two million people from 2005 (Rover, 2011) the increasingly complex warfare between insurers and hospitals over who pays the bills is gobbling up a great deal of money and the end result is that the United States pays roughly twice as much per

“The amount people pay for health insurance increased 30 percent from 2001 to 2005, while income for the same period of time only increased 3 percent.” (Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). The rising cost of healthcare is a huge problem in America today. In this paper I will analyze the different issues and causes for the increase in cost.

Carol Liebau discusses in her article, “ObamaCare Limits Patient Choice”, that hospitals such as Cedars-Sinai and the Mayo Clinic are high-priced and under competitive pressure because of Obamacare. Insurance corporations are in a larger hurry than ever to cut costs (Liebau). However, Americans are coming to realize that those hospitals aren't just thoughtless profit centers. They are pricey because they provide advanced medical care or they offer the specialized treatments that the most ill patients require. Many Americans who had plans they could afford and had access to leading healthcare providers, find that under ObamaCare, they are being excluded from high-quality care unless they want to pay much more for

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

Regulations that prevent insurance companies from participating in interstate commerce have caused competition to grow stagnant in the United States. This lack of competition has allowed the adoption of wasteful procedures by healthcare providers, which in turn passes the increased expenses back to the insurance companies. Therein, insurance costs increase, crippling consumer’s cash flow and quality of life. While healthcare costs continue to rise, people must scrutinize the current healthcare system.

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,

Under a free-market system, health care is characterized in three ways – cost, access, and quality. In the United States, a mixed economic system that favors a free market system, health care is characterized as high cost, low access, and high quality. As such, these dichotomies pose an imperfect, inefficient scenario – the high cost and low access of health care lead people to not purchase insurance, while the high quality of health care drives people to still receive health care services. As a result, millions of Americans are currently uninsured, yet still utilizing various health care services, and are unable to pay their medical bills. This poses yet another conundrum - how can uninsured individuals receive medical care without paying for it? More importantly, who ends up paying for these services? Having recognized this gap between receiving medical care and paying for medical care,

One of the issues that is widely discussed and debated concerning the United States economy is the healthcare system. Unlike in the majority of developed and developing countries, the healthcare system in the United States is not public, meaning that the state does not provide free or cheap healthcare services. This paper addresses many of the factors contributing to the rising cost of healthcare.

The health care crisis in the United States has been out of control for many years. According to National Health Expenditure Projections, Americans will spend approximately 3.2 trillion on health care in 2015. If the United States health care system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet (National Health Expenditure). The article stated that back in 1960, an average person spends 147 dollars on health care, that number had increase rapidly to 8,086 dollars. I wonder why, but then again, cost of health care is not regulated by the government, prices are set by American Medical Association (National Health Expenditure).

In addition, this multi-payer system allows health care prices be set though the private marketplace of the country driving high costs for everyone. This health care system is the only one in the world that gives the freedom of setting their fees and prices, as they see convenient, to the large number of independent providers of health care services and marketers of pharmaceutical and medical supplies that exists. By doing so, the system has become unaffordable for the uninsured because of its excessive costs, and health insurance companies have been forced to accept whatever prices they set since they need to have them included in their networks.

Improving health is in the best interest of everyone, including non health professionals. Health mangers need to be constantly looking for ways to improve access to health, the quality of the care, and cost containment.

In the past few years, there have been large and persistent differences in costs and quality in the health care system. These variations have contributed to the performance of several studies to examine the link between cost and quality in health care. Since medical resources are allocated and used differently, health care costs and patient outcomes differ widely as high costs don't necessary result in better car services. However, there is a great link between health care costs and quality of these services on patient outcomes.