Healthcare System in Us

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.

The Medicare program is being perceived that it will go bankrupt in about 10 years unless there is major reform. There are six recommendations that should be reformed for the protection of the program for future generations. The program must protect retirees from an economic healthcare disaster. The cost of the program must be shared and this will motivate benefactors to reduce cost by adding accountability to the program. Reducing Medicare expenditures will have a much larger impact than increasing taxes. Calculating the retirement age in correlation to life

Republicans and economist want to privatize Medicare turning it into a voucher-like program that subsidizes purchases of private health insurance. House Republicans have proposed this bill in order to fulfill the GOP goal of balancing the budget in 10 years. Having said that, I can only hypothesize that the amount of capital available to the “new” Medicare population will dwindle and the needs of elderly patients may not be met.

The U.S. health care system faces challenges that indicate that the people urgently need to be reform. Attention has rightly focused on the approximately 46 million Americans who are uninsured, and on the many insured Americans who face rapid increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. As Congress and the Obama administration consider ways to invest new funds to reduce the number of Americans without insurance coverage, we must simultaneously address shortfalls in the quality and efficiency of care that lead to higher costs and to poor health outcomes. To do otherwise casts doubt on the feasibility and sustainability of coverage expansions and also ensures that our current health care system will continue to have large gaps even for those with access to insurance coverage.

Expansion of the Medicaid coverage to all new eligible adults and increase fee for service and managed care by primary care physicians will be financed by federal funding. This will cause an outreageous increase in the Federal deficit from the historical 2.9% Gross Domestic Product to more than 20% by 2050.

Medicare is projected to cost 6.4 trillion dollars or 14.8% of the federal budget for the period (Budget of

The Better Care Reconciliation Act would phase out Medicaid expansion beginning in 2021, a larger timeline compared to the House of Representative's health care bill, though cuts would be deeper. Older people under 65 years old would pay five five times as much for coverage than younger people, compared to the current 3-to-1 ratio.

The problem of rising healthcare costs is to be addressed because of its nation-wide significance. Predictions given by economic analyst suggest that funding for Medicare will run out of money and will not be operate-able by the year 2024 if government remains the major payer for healthcare and the costs of Medicare continue to rise. Government will not be able to continue financing the healthcare system on its own (Gersh, 2011).

By 2027 Medicare spending is projected to rise to 17.5% from the recorded 15% in 2016. Then in 2029 Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund is expected to be completely washed-out (Cubanski & Neuman, 2017).

According to a Washington Post analysis of a report from the Congressional Budget Office, approximately $741 billion of the funding comes from Medicare cuts over ten years, with $415 billion of that coming from cuts to payment rates. From that same analysis, another significant source of funding is new and increased revenue from taxes. Over ten years, some $161 billion of these taxes come in the form of penalties paid by individuals and employers for not meeting the terms of the insurance mandate, while another $318 billion comes as a result of increased taxes on unearned income for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year. (Kliff, 2012)

Major Findings by Payer Medicare due to a deceleration in growth across most service types in 2012, Medicare spending growth is estimated to have slowed to 4.6 percent, down from 6.2 percent growth in 2011, for a total of $580.0 billion. Projected Medicare spending growth of 4.2 percent in 2013 reflects the 2-percent reduction in Medicare payments mandated in the Budget Control Act of 2011, also referred to as sequestration. For 2015 through 2022, projected Medicare spending growth of 7.4 percent reflects the net effect of faster growth in enrollment and utilization, increased severity of illness and treatment intensity, and faster growth in input prices, partially offset by ACA-mandated adjustments to payments for certain providers, lower payments to private plans, and reducing scheduled spending when spending exceeds formula-driven targets. Medicaid Medicaid spending is estimated to have grown 2.2 percent to $416.8 billion in 2012, similar to the 2.5 percent growth in

Health care systems are organizations that are formed to meet the overall health needs of the population. Health care is regarded as one of the leading cause in promoting not only physical and mental health but the well-being of the population. Legislation is implemented requiring government to offer services to all members of its society. The role of health services and the organizations that provide aid is to focus on the health of an individual and to uphold their human rights. According to WHO (2013), a “well-functioning health care system requires a robust financing mechanism, a well-trained and adequately-paid workforce, reliable information on which to base decisions and policies, and well maintained facilities and logistics to deliver quality medicines and technologies (World Health Organization; 2013).

Medicare is facing a fiscal crisis that threatens its sustainability. The need for significant Medicare reform is increasingly urgent as 76 million baby boomers are expected to retire over the next two decade. According to the 201 Medicare Trustees Report, the Hospital Insurance trust fund will be depleted in 2024. This translates to $27 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years. Current projections indicate that health care costs will increase by more that 70 percent over the next ten years and will continue thereafter to consume an increasingly greater portion of personal income.

One of the problems of Medicare itself is that it doesn't cover the costs of prescription drugs for its members; this has led to one of the major reasons that the program is in danger. A great deal of personal healthcare relies on the use of drugs, and since the program doesn't cover these costs, the individual must bear them. According to the AARP, in 1999 out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs were estimated to be $450 per person each year (AARP). Obviously, members have joined the program to defray their medical costs, but these figures indicate that they still have large costs to pay. The other problem faced by the Medicare program is that it is also suffering from a lack of funds. According to Governor George W. Bush, the financial health of Medicare is in serious jeopardy and might face deficit as soon as 2010 (Bush). As a result of these major problems, one might wonder why the plan isn't scrapped for another program; well according to polls done by the Public Agenda, an Internet public policy site, American citizens are strongly in favor of Medicare, and would rather see the problems ironed out (Public Agenda). Therefore it is necessary to come up with a solution, so that the Medicare program remains intact.

The third category, spending and interest, accounts for the littlest of the three categories. In lament terms, Social security, military and healthcare account for the majority of our budget. This is no surprise because Social Security and healthcare are both mandatory spending (services our programs we rely on) and the military is discretionary spending (services or programs we rely on), and as stated above, this accounts for the majority of our spending, thus our debt. We rely on these services on a daily basis, and the baby boomers continue to age, the cost spends on social security and Medicare will continue to grow. The same goes for healthcare. As healthcare continues to be costly, the amount spent on Medicaid and insurance providers will continue to grow as well. After reading and understanding where the money is spent, when I took the Concord Coalition’s Federal Budget Challenge, I had a better realization of how little things can improve the deficit in big ways.