Essay about U.S. Health Care system

Medical technology is a strong suit in the U.S., most commonly found in more expensive insurance

For the last five years of my life I have worked in the healthcare industry. One of the biggest issues plaguing our nation today has been the ever rising cost of health care. If we don't get costs under control, we risk losing the entire system, as well as potentially crippling our economy. For the sake of our future, we must find a way to lower the cost of health care in this nation.

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

The increase of expenses - As politicians continue their dissension amongst each other, the situation is worsening in our healthcare system. According to the World Health Organization, to achieve universal health coverage, countries need a financial system that enables people access to all types of health services without incurring financial hardship (Carrin, Mathauer, Xu, & Evans, 2011). This idea would be the foundation of innovative ideas that the U.S. could reform its healthcare system, but too many ideas are sabotaging any valid efforts. In the mean time, the U.S. healthcare system continues to deal with issues such as the increasing uninsured Americans (over 49 million), expensive administrative procedures and the inability to measure the accuracy of quality of care, access of care, and the increasing healthcare spending and financing that limit our ability to efficient utilize resources.

The biggest issue in America is not just hunger, education, and crime- but health care. Perhaps the cause of these other issues, health care is expensive and hard to access. The high cost is tolerated in the belief that more expensive health care leads to better care. This is not true, as studies show that 20% to 30% of patients are issued the wrong treatment or medicine. These medical errors have caused thousands of lives to be lost- at a higher cost. As more Americans are aware of our low ranking in worldwide health care- Japan, Sweden, and Canada making the top three-the need for a nationwide health care reform is much debated. Even with other great countries to mirror we are still hesitant in reforming health care to make it accessible to every American citizen. Although the United States guarantees it's citizens access to fire and police services, protection by military, national postal service, and education as well as many other free federal- and state-funded services they have yet to commit to ensuring them health care coverage.

Total health care spending in 1975 consumed about 8 percent of the U.S economy in 1975. Today it accounts for nearly 16 percent of the gross domestic product and is projected to reach nearly 20 percent by 2016 (Orszag, 2007). One of the reasons for rising health care costs is due to costly new medical technologies. Some of these new medical advancements allow for physicians to treat previously untreatable conditions. It is unclear as to whether these new options are cost effective. Most people believe that more expensive care equates to better health care. There is significant evidence to support that more expensive care does not necessarily mean higher-quality care. This suggests that there may be an opportunity to reduce health care spending without impairing outcomes The most compelling evidence of that opportunity comes from the substantial geographic differences in spending on health care within the United States-and the fact that they do not translate into higher life expectancy or measured

Medical cost trend is the projected percentage increase in the cost to treat patients from one year to the next. After significant five-year shrinkage in healthcare spending growth comes to an end by next year as the economy grows stronger it releases a repressed demand for care and services. Despite some higher utilization and cost of new technologies, research for new cures of AIDS, hepatitis C, cancer, and multiple sclerosis, the rise in the expected growth rate in 2015-2016 is tolerable compared to the two-digit annual increases seen through the late 1990s and early 2000s. While the structure of the health care delivery system has undergone significant change over the last decade health care cost inflation slowed recently, primarily as

Universal Healthcare sounds appealing, but it actually lowers the quality and quantity of healthcare services that are rendered to patients, thus downgrading the healthcare system as a whole.  Not having to pay, with everyone having coverage leads to longer wait times for medical service and many people overusing health care services. Implementation of Universal Healthcare in the United States would lead to a detrimental crippling of the nation’s health system. For those countries that have implemented Universal Healthcare or a system similar to it, all or most aspects of the coverage such as cost and care is generally provided by and tightly controlled by the government, a public-sector committee, or employer-based programs, with most of the funding essentially coming from tax revenues or budget cuts in other areas of spending. This paper will conclude with comparing the US healthcare system to others and how the US has one of the most advanced systems in the world.

Healthcare in the United States is rooted in the private sector. The private sector directly funds 56% of the expenditures through private health insurance, household expenditures and copays, and other private expenditures. (CMS, 2014) The US healthcare system can thank the private sector for providing much strength such as new diagnostic technologies, innovative treatments and procedures, and dynamism. American hospitals and physicians are regarded internationally as being of high quality. Americans can also be proud that the physician- patient relationship is among the most trusted and valued relationships in the country. By allowing the private sector to take a lead role in the healthcare system, the United States values

America is without a question the leading country of medical and scientific advances. There always seem to be a new medical breakthrough every time you watch the news or read the paper, especially in the cure of certain diseases. However, the medical research requires an enormous amount of money. The U.S. spends the most money on health care yet many people, mainly the working class Americans are still without any type of health insurance and thus are more susceptible to health risks and problems. The concept of health insurance for Americans was formulated over a century ago. Most Americans obtain health insurance from

Healthcare is a major topic that is constantly being brought up in the news. It is often discussed within categories such as economics, politics, and policy. The reason that is, is because of healthcare's crucial role integration as part of each of these things. With that said, the United States has received back and forth opinions on the healthcare services that it offers. Karl Polanyi defines embeddedness as a way in which economic activity is constrained societies set of institutions (Tuttle 2018). So this implies that there are two main elements that are 'embedded' into the American culture, individualism and capitalism. These two elements shape the way the healthcare system is set up. Capitalism

There are many reasons to why healthcare has gone up and one of those reasons is the increase of medical technology. As the years advance, the medical technology advances as well with more sophisticated approaches to many different type of illnesses; such as CT scanners, implantable defibrillators and surgeries like angioplasty and joint replacements. According to Hastings Center, “new or increased use of medical technology contributes 40–50% to annual cost increases”. With this information we can see that order to reduce healthcare due to medical technology we must learn to to control it and manage the amount that goes into the market. The Hasting Center also mentioned that “universal care is the only tried and effective way to control costs but will involve a large cultural shift because cutting the use of technology will seem wrong—even immoral—to many”. With this being said, many citizens would greatly appreciate that the healthcare cost would be lowered but having the cost lowered may mean that the government

The healthcare system plays a key role in the economic stability of our country, as every year trillions are spent in attempt to combat disease and health issues that plaque humanity. As it makes up a significant amount of the expenditures in the economy, so the costs associated with health care of those in pain from illness and injury, including lost productivity, increased need of assistance in living and also the cost of death in some cases, is important to the economic stability and over all standard of living in our country. The key to economic prosperity is balancing the need for care with the costs of illness to keep as many people healthy and well without breaking the bank of collective society. The costs of healthcare have been increasingly problematic in recent years with so many issues surrounding the current system. With the “total health care spending in the United States expected to reach $4.8 trillion in 2021, up from $2.6 trillion in 2010 and $75 billion in 1970, meaning that health care spending will account for nearly 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or one-fifth of the U.S. economy, by 2021” (Aetna). With this in mind it is apparent that as we look at the trillion-dollar industry of the medical community it seems that it needs to be a major focus of our nation as a whole and with the many issues come many creative solutions. First let us analyze the reasons behind the current cost and the major problems facing this industry and than discus what

It is ubiquitously known that US health care costs are ballooning, according to research hospital costs grew around 8 percent a year, on average, between 1978 and 2008. 8 percent might seem a small number but it was double the CPI (4 percent a year) which measures the overall price rises in the U.S. economy (Baumol, 6-7). Furthermore, 17% of United States’ GDP was spent on health care, this number exceeded every other country’s health care spending (Altman and Shactman, 235). These costs are attributed to a plethora of different factors. However, there seems to be a consensus that health care costs need to be curbed immediately before there are long-lasting consequences. Despite these incessantly increasing costs, people are still

The current state of United States’ health care system is one of the most polarizing subjects of debate among scholars and other health care professionals across the globe. This can be attributed to the fact that at one extreme end, there are some who argue that that Americans have the best system of health care in the world (MePhee, 2013). Perhaps the availability of the state-of-the-art facilities and free medical technology that have become highly symbolic of the various industries in the United States have motivated the idea of the country’s health care system being unparalleled to others. However, there is a common belief that the fight for universal health care can only be successful if its current state of health care is described as a failure in the modern era as emphasized by MePhee (2013).