Healthcare and Drugs in America Essay

The comparison between health care in the United States and health care in Canada has been a continuing debate. America does not have a universal health coverage plan for it's population, while Canadians are privileged to have universal health coverage. Normally a patient will pay twice as much for health coverage in the United States compared to treatment in Canada. This puts the US in first position of having the most expensive health care system on earth. (http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/health-care-for-all/has-canada-got-the-cure) Most of the population in the United States have no health coverage at all. Compared to Canada, the wait time for elective procedures in the United States is somewhat longer. Many Americans feel the

With access to prescription drugs, people are able to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses. These drugs help deal with pain, inability to sleep, depression, and much more. Every day we are increasingly living in a world where there is better living through chemicals. However, what most do not seem to see is the rising tide of pain, illness, and ultimately death being caused by the pills people take every day. Most keep drugs in a special place in their minds, where they see them as harmless. Sadly, this is not the case, and in some cases our prescription drugs can be just as harmful as illegal drugs (King 68).

Drug abuse is one of the most discouraged behaviors in our country. In the United States of America, we, the people value several things, some of which are freedom, expanding and taking care of our families and our financial security. We, the people, take such things for granted. We also discourage some behavior, such as crime, laziness and use of illegal drugs.

Pharmaceutical companies are provided with temporary monopoly rights on the production of new drugs which result in a higher cost on consumers. If competing companies were allowed to produce generic forms of those drugs, consumers will be able to afford those medications even in cases where those consumers have no insurance coverage. The company responsible for developing and inventing the original medication could be offered incentives to invent in the future by either obtaining tax breaks or NIH funding for future research. They could even be offered a percentage of the sales of the generic drugs. Economist Gary S. Becker advocates dropping many FDA requirements that, in his opinion, provide no additional safety measures but rather delay the development of new drugs.[12] Betamethasone, for example, has been part of the standard prenatal care in Europe since the late 1970’s while it got adopted in the U.S. after 1997. On many occasions, the FDA ignores all scientific evidence concerning certain drugs because the manufacturer did not follow their mandated bureaucratic standards.

“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.

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

Healthcare expenditures have more than doubled since 1965. Americans spend over a trillion dollars a year on health care. (2). As of 1996, 110 million Americans were enrolled in HMO's. More than three-fourths of all individuals in HMO's are covered by job-based insurance. More than 13 million Medicaid recipients have been put into managed care plans. Managed care and HMO's have been the subject of many negative stories in the press and are constantly being charged with endangering the health and lives of their enrollees. As a result, congressional hearing, state, and federal regulation, and action by the

When a person thinks of problems that haunt the state, mostly what comes to mind are drunk driving, the meth epidemic, or the bipolar weather, but our state has a crisis that is on the rise and catching the attention of the police force all over the state. Our state ranks high among all states with people, ages 12 and older, taking prescription pills without being prescribed them. (NSDUH) Many teens and adults can recall a friend asking them for their prescription pills or have witnessed someone taking these pills illegally. Throughout my life, there are many instances that I can recall from memory that deal with prescription pills and these instance changed or altered my life. People tend to think that prescription pills are safer than

The United States spends more on health care than any other country in the entire world. The current level of national expenditures is astounding. According to us.governmentspending.com, the anticipated total of healthcare spending in the United States is $7,400.00 per person each year (Kaiser, 2009). Over the years the total of healthcare spending has continued to increase at a rapid rate. In 2009 healthcare costs accounted for 16% of the U.S. GDP ("Health care expenditures:," 2009 ). This paper will discuss different aspects of healthcare costs in the United States and what makes it better or what makes it worse.

The United States' health care industry has gone through more changes in the past ten years than any other business in modern times. Health care spending has grown exponentially over the past half-century. But for 2014-24, health spending is projected to grow at an average rate of 5.8 percent per year.1 Several factors will contribute to this growth. The population in the United States is increasingly getting older, and it is the elderly that require the most medical care. Also, medical technology has made tremendous strides during this time, and with increased technology comes an increased price tag. Rising medical costs first became an issue during the Nixon administration, and eventually

Health reform constitutes our most important domestic priority and is an integral part of economic recovery. Since 2000, health insurance premiums have almost doubled, growing three times faster than wages. This means foregone opportunities for chronic disease management and prevention. As the American economy continues to transform, it is expected that fewer and fewer employers will offer coverage. From 2003 to 2007, the number of “under-insured” families – those who pay for coverage but are unprotected against high costs – rose by 60 percent. We have by far the most expensive health system in the world. We spend 50 percent more per person than the average developed country -- spending more on health care than housing or food.

The American healthcare system has been a constant failure throughout history. We spend the most on healthcare which is 17.1% of our GDP. Compared to France (11.6%) and the U.K. (8.8%). When calculated it comes to $9,086 per person before inflation. We perceive the problem arising with individual spending for doctor visits, prescriptions, and health insurance we begin to detect the money pile up. To compare it to other countries only those in Switzerland paid $566 more than those in the U.S., but the average cost in the U.K. was $277 and those in France paid $270. Compared to the second-highest paying nation (Canada) we spent five times more per capita (Squires et al.).

* Competitive Pricing – Merck is sometimes forced to lower prices of products, either ones that have gone off patent to maintain market share in the product, as well as for products that are still on patent in order to compete with rival products for the same treatment that are marketed by competitors

The basic reason that companies patent a new drug is to guarantee the exclusive legal rights to profit from its innovation for a certain number of years, typically 20 years for a product patent (Celly, 2004). Both patents guaranteed

The cessation of research funding by large pharmaceutical firms after the expiration of their patent for a brand medication is a major setback for research at large. Indeed, quality of life and life expectancy have markedly increased in the last century, in part, due to advances in pharmacology fueled by drug development by pharmaceutical firms. Enormous amounts of money are invested in drug development, but an infinitesimal number of all the compounds synthesized and tested eventually make it to the market. Although scrutiny has to be exerted to prevent brand companies from over-pricing new drugs, there should also be rigorous surveillance of cost setting for