The American Healthcare System: The Most Inefficient Healthcare System In The World

United States is the largest and most diverse society on the globe. It spends almost 2 trillion dollars every year on health care, which is one in every seven dollars in the economy. U.S is one of the very few nations where all its citizens do not have medical coverage. Although it spends heavily on per capita on health care, and it has the most advanced medical technology system in the world, still it is not the healthiest nation on earth. The system performs so poorly that it leaves 50 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered (Garson, 2010).

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 first characteristic of the US health care system is that there is no central governing agency which allows for little integration and coordination. While the government has a great influence on the health care system, the system is mostly controlled through private hands. The system is financed publically and privately creating a variety of payments and delivery unlike centrally controlled healthcare systems in other developed countries. The US system is more complex and less manageable than centrally controlled health care systems, which makes it more expensive. The second characteristic of the US health care system is that it is technology driven and focuses on acute care. With more usage of high technology,

According to the Garber & Skinner (2008), the United States spends more on health care than other nations but continues to score below other nations in numerous areas of measurement. These scores in, consideration with amount spent, suggest that healthcare is the United States is inefficient. Additionally, the United States has a significantly large portion of under

The single most important impetus for healthcare reform throughout recent history has been rising costs (Sultz, 2006). In the book called The healing of America: a global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health care, Reid wrote that the nation’s health care system has become excessively expensive, ineffective, and unjust. Among the world’s developed nations, the US ranks near the bottom for healthcare access and quality. However, the US ranks at the top for health expenditure as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and average of $7,400 per person (Reid, 2010). Therefore, Americans are spending

Primary care is the backbone of many industrialized nations, but is the US one of them? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The US lags behind such developed nations in its accessibility of primary care by a huge difference. The United States healthcare system fails to ensure the timely preventative and primary care for its residents. The current estimates indicate that there is merely one physician for every 2,500 patients. Not only Medicare beneficiaries, but also privately insured adults struggle in accessing the right primary care physician at the right time. Moreover, maldistribution of physicians only exacerbates the problem, especially for those residing in health professional shortage areas (HPSA).15 Approximately, sixty-five million Americans live in designated primary care shortage areas.13 Such underserved population faces higher disease and death rates and health disparities that then result in higher rates of hospitalizations and emergency department visits—in other words, expensive medical bills.21 More governmental control on the geographic location of primary care physicians can be a first-step to fixing the shortage problem.

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

All these quantitative data of doctor consultation per capita, access to care and efficiency suggest that for how much average US citizen is paying for individual healthcare is greater than other developed countries but efficiency of services does not necessarily follow the same rank as the spending. This paper aims to raise the question about source of high medical expenditure regardless of its low efficiency in general.

In 1998, the United States devoted 13% of its economy to health care, and this figure rose to 16% by 2008. However, despite this rise in government expenditure on health care, outcomes for patients remained the same (Obama, 2016). The quality of the health care system in general was not great; health care

According to data presented by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US health care cost exceeded $ 8,000 per capita, in 2010, comparing to the next most expensive system (Norway) $5,000 per capita (OECD Health Data, 2012). Despite being the most expensive system in the word, US healthcare system has failed on many areas of performance and quality. According to OECD data, US has much lower life expectancy than other industrialized countries, also the infant mortality rate is higher than those countries. Moreover, the US is the only industrialized country that does not provide its citizens a protection of a universal health care coverage.

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,

Adequate measurements surrounding changes to the U.S. Healthcare system, shaped by the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) are not yet available. One of the goals through this policy is to insure all Americans, helping to reduce the rising costs in our healthcare system. The U.S. has been unable to present results that have been directly tied to this law, specifically regarding health care spending. In review of publications by The Commonwealth Fund (2010) discussing cross-national comparisons of health care systems of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), pertaining to data from 2006, it is notable that of 30 industrialized counties measured, the U.S. health care spending was

“To summarize these results, failure to risk-rate health insurance policy results in three types of market failure. First, moral hazard will affect the medical care purchase market. Second, consumers will fail to achieve the optimal allocation of income among states of the world; more specifically,low-risks consumers will systematically subsidize the insurance purchases of high risks. Third, the conditions for optimal spending on health promotion activities will not be met”. (O'Malley, 1989, p. 304).

The United States is the most powerful countries in the world and plays a central leadership role in the world. The U.S. health care policy is amongst the finest and many industrialized nations are laboring toughly to emulate a health care system that mimic the scheme executed by the United States. The United States of America is well known with its high-priced health care system in the globe because they expends farther than its counterparts related to the Gross Domestic product (GDP) per capita approximately “18%” (Kinckman & Kovner, 2015).

high proportion of people without coverage, the inefficient and inequitable incentives for the purchase and provision of insurance, the problems in deciding what should be covered, the ineffective payment incentives, administrative costs and complexities, the variable quality