Opportunity Costs In Healthcare

The articles I chose for my annotated bibliography were about healthcare cost and quality. The theme in many of these articles was about healthcare cost and does it affect patients experience. In some settings like hospitals, the cost of quality affects patient experience. The largest component of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product goes to healthcare spending (17% in 2009), and yet the quality is unsatisfactory. It was also interesting to find out that more people die each year in the United States from medical errors than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS (National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, 2002).

Our Healthcare system is clearly business based according to the article “Cost Conundrum” and on the movie “Escape Fire”. In the movie it had an impacting story of an older lady who had heart problems where she went to a doctor and they were going to charge her thousands of dollars were later she went to a different doctor and they charged her a couple hundred dollars for t he same procedure. I couldn’t believe that in a different office she would get the same procedure done for a lot cheaper than in the other doctor’s office. Also, it surprised me how the medical staff are giving all these medications to our soldiers were they are clearly

Therefore the annual interest rate is 8% and the effective annual rate compounded quarterly is 8.24%

It is no secret that the US healthcare has many issues in its system. Especially, when you compare it to other countries like: Great Britain, Japan, France, Canada etc. According to Sultz and Young states that “The United States ranks eighth behind all of these nations in life expectancy at birth, highest in infant mortality rate, and highest in the probability of people dying between the age of 15 and 60 years.” The US healthcare system has many issues like a large number of uninsured According to Sara R. Collins, Munira Gunja and Sophie Beutel in the 2014 census 33 million people were uninsured. Other issues are medical professional shortage, medical error or infection, people using apps to diagnose themselves, and rising cost of care. The main focus in these paper will be the rising of cost. The cost of current health care explains for most of the issues that is happening in this country.

Federal health care costs continue to exceed the American economy fueled by federal health care law, rising enrollments, and increased enrollee spending. The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) significantly changed federal health care policies in the key areas of insurance coverage, access to care, medical care financing, and Medicare program operations. ACA provides good benefits to Americans but comes with a 12.2% increase in cost to the federal government (Meyer, 2017). Health care costs are projected to increase to more than $4 trillion dollars by the end of 2017 nearly doubling since 2006 (Meyer, 2017). Economists project this trend to continue estimating a 6.9% increase annually making it the single highest cost to the federal government (Edwards, 2017). The cost of health care is approaching a crisis if unchecked will continue to grow. Congress has struggled to reach consensus on a more efficient approach to managing health cares costs failing in 2017 to repeal or replace ACA. They will need to reengage now to enact laws to stabilize this looming threat to the American people. I recommend three changes to reduce the impact to federal debt. These changes are repeal individual and employer mandates,

The nation health care system is facing significant challenges that requiring immediate major reforms. Lately close attention is drawn to the uninsured Americans, such as the most painful dilemmas of health care system. The problem of uninsured and uncompensated care continues significantly contribute to the rise of the health care cost and has been a chief topic for public debates and political campaigns for a long time. The purpose of this paper is to describe the current extent of uninsured care and provide the strategies from the nursing point of view how to change the trajectory of this prevalent issue in the USA health care system.

Health care costs have become a major issue in the United States, both socially and politically. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 50.7 million people, or nearly one in six U.S. residents, were uninsured in 2009 (Kaiser Health News, 2010).This is because the high cost of health care has driven the cost of insurance out of the reach of many Americans.

In 2010, the United States health care spending grew 3.9 percent. The total health care expenditures reached $2.6 trillion, which translates to $8,402 per person or 17.9 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Health care spending plays a major role in shaping our country's health care system. Financing health care influences how people access health care, the types of health care provided, and how the cost of health care is distributed among members of society by income and by health status. The United States has been in a recession for much of the past decade, resulting in higher unemployment and lower incomes for many Americans. (Wikipedia)

The cost of health explains almost half of the budgets of the state from financing the Medicaid program to providing health care for the employees of the state and other less qualified population like the prisoners (Vanderbeaux, 2014). In America, thousands upon thousands of decisions concerning health care are made by State legislatures every year (Vanderbeaux, 2014). Some of those decisions involve how best to provide appropriate care more efficiently, and deciding on what age group of patients needs to be immunized (Vanderbeaux, 2014).

When talking about the United States healthcare system, it seems any conversation centers around cost. Whether it is corporations or employers talking about rising healthcare premiums that are out of control, to American families discussing getting less coverage for the amount of the premium they pay, or the soon to be retired person who wonders how they will make it with the high cost of Medicare premiums and prescription drugs. The challenge continues to be delivering world class healthcare at an affordable cost to all stakeholders. The cost of healthcare continues to impact the dominating delivery system of Managed Care here in the United States.

Not only is liability an issue, but also the mere cost of medical insurance doctors have to pay. Fewer doctors will provide obstetric care on the basis that they cannot afford the cost of insurance. This directly impacts women who need the care of these physicians. Despite having an average salary between $200,000 and $250,000 per year, OB-GYNs have the highest malpractice premiums at about $34,000. Medical students are already in a position of having to play “catch up.” Years of student debt from graduate and medical school take years to pay off, and higher medical premiums doctors face make it near impossible. Moreover, the cost of education is rising and students are acquiring greater amounts debt. According to an Association of American

Cost benefits of the community may include a variety of health necessities that serve useful for the patient and the healthcare provider. It entails items that deem useful in the treatment and preventive care of the patient. In a situation that results are necessary to receive an equipment is needed to conduct the patients pinpoint health for examination. In making the decision of different options seen to be useful for a healthcare facility an ultrasound device is the best way to connect the patient's health with the healthcare provider.

The cost of healthcare and healthcare spending is a key component of any developed economy in that with good facilities there is a good source of human resource. Considerate health spending leads to the development of medical technologies and drugs hence satisfying fundamental social and individual demands for services that brings greater productivity, improved health, and longer lives. As compared to other sectors of the economy in the USA, health care is publicly funded. According to Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) public spending in the United States of America accounted for almost half of total spending in the year 2011 as compared to 60-80 percent in other developed countries. The American society is currently grappling with exorbitant health care charges that have plagued the public; the high cost of health care services has been an issue that the ruling class has been grappling with. It has taken both political and social dimensions especially with the agitation of the Obamacare health plan when Senator Obama came into power. The focus of this discourse, though, is not to get into the political and social vagaries of the healthcare system, but rather to focus on the salient issues related to affordable care act (ACA) the American republic.

One of the many reasons why health care costs are escalating is administrative costs or waste, some authors have identified other sources of waist such as operational and clinical waste. Administrative costs are the result of unnecessary or redundant administrative processes of the complex multi-payer and insurance system of the U.S (Bentley, Effros, Palar, & Keeler, 2008). In a recent study that compared the costs of hospital administration among eight different countries, including the United States, the authors found that the US spent twice as much as Canada on hospital administration also, these costs raised from 23.5% in 2000 to 25.3% in 2001 and what is more, the authors did not found a link between higher

I can definitely agree with you that employers can control the cost of health care.