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Health Care Spending

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Health Care Spending in the United States
Lisa Patti
HCS/440
April 23, 2012
Caryn Callahan

Introduction
Heath care in the United States is costly and confusing. Many do not follow the facts, policies or cost the government has controlled in health care. This leads to obtaining the incorrect insurance that causes high out of pocket expenses to choosing no health insurance at all. In today’s society many cannot afford health insurance, in 2010 49.9 million people in the United States were without health insurance (Overview of the Uninsured in the United States: A Summary of the 2011 Current Population Survey, 2011). The issues that will be discussed are the level of current nation health care expenditures, whether spending is too …show more content…

Misdiagnosis leads to more testing and more office visits, which is more of an expense for the provider and patient. “Overtreatment is a national scandal. It's bad for our health: with medical errors now estimated to be our eighth leading cause of death, drugs, procedures and hospital stays can be risky (as well as painful, time-consuming and wallet-straining) even when they're necessary” (Grunwald, 2010). There is no proof that spending more gives better care.
How the general public’s health care is paid for
There are many ways to pay for health care. Health care may be government funded, employment based insurance, individual insurance and uninsured. The chart below represents the percent of total expenditures for each provided funding to public health care payments for 2010. The older of the baby boomers and the negative impact of the economy have accounted for the highest percent, Medicare and Medicaid.

(Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2011)

Conclusion
Health care in the United States is the most expensive in the world, and the subject of such will be a continuous one. The United States offers many programs, government and private owned to help people obtain and pay for health care. The United States health care system is reforming to quality over quantity and finding that too much might be one of the important causes to the high cost of health care.

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