Wasteful Spending In Health Care

Imagine this: you are tragically diagnosed with a chronic life-threatening illness. Your only hope to survive is through medication to treat your disorder. The medicine is pricy but you can work out the costs each month. One day, you go to fill your prescriptions and realize the cost of a $13 pill has jumped to an astounding $750. You need this patented medication to survive and to afford it you end up losing your home, filing for bankruptcy, and sleeping in your car. This story sounds fictional but it is the reality for many Americans who can no longer afford their grossly overpriced medications.

As we advance in our healthcare system and continue to find cure for the deadly diseases we are also faced with prescription drug prices rising much faster than they were a few years back. Drug prices are increasing at an unmaintainable rate without any sign of reduction. People who are heavily affected by this rise are mostly elderly citizens and also the poor of this country because they can barely afford these expenses. These people either have no money to pay for their copays or no health insurances at all.

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 high cost of healthcare continues to rise and many in the United States are optimistic for health information technology to reduce and improve our current situation. Health IT encompasses a broad array of new technologies designed to manage and share health-related information. When properly implemented, these systems can help coordinate patient care, reduce medical errors, and improve administrative efficiency. Therefore, implementing a Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) will help the National Health Information Network (NHIN) achieve their goals in improving quality of care for the citizens of the United States. Thus, in order for the health IT to deliver on its promise, several obstacles must be overcome.

The documentary “Money and Medicine,” reveals the essentials of unnecessary health care spending and the policies that intervene with the health care systems. In the beginning of the film, the people being interviewed talked about patients receiving major amounts of unnecessary treatment and that a majority of health care spending is devoted to needless services. Several physicians in the video explained the extreme dangers that are present within health care; along with clarifying that they are paid more when doing harm to their patients and when they do more for them even if it is not beneficial to do so. If the cost of health care continues to rise, health care will become too expensive and unavailable that the U.S. will be put in a financial

There are many problems with healthcare in America today. One of them including the astronomical cost. According to CDC.ORG in 2007 the average person spends seven thousand four hundred dollars per year on health care alone. This rise in healthcare is extremely detrimental for families, seniors, and people of all ages. With such a high cost of insurance people are forced to make hard choices in

In 2014, the average cost for an individual rose to $5,615. For those that have an income over $200,000 have to pay a higher tax. This tax is called the Robin Hood redistribution and was set to begin in 2014 with the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. For the employers of companies, on average, they would have to pay around 30% for their employees to be covered with healthcare and insurance whereas in 2010, they only had to pay around 10%-20% of their healthcare and insurance. Currently, Americans have higher health insurance premiums, increased deductibles through their health plans, and the highest prescription drug costs our country has ever had. The costs in prescription drugs drastically rose between 2010 and 2014. Since 2010, the average cost for a patient to fill a prescription drug through commercial plans have risen by more than 25%. Drug companies put a higher cost on their drugs in 2014 as they saw the rise of those acquiring health insurance and healthcare. However, in states such as Kentucky and Arkansas, in 2014, people who skipped paying for their medication due to the cost being so high, dropped by 15% from roughly 43% to 28% due to Obamacare. Although, with Medicaid expanding, this puts more pressure on the middle-class population in the country as well as healthcare professionals as many physicians have to pay nearly half of what they earn to the

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act created a $250 rebate if the Medicare beneficiary was in the coverage gap. It also expanded coverage to the discounts given on brand name prescriptions. With reforms and improvement comes disadvantage to others. Beneficiaries and patients will be able to start saving more money, but it comes with a decline for the drug providers. According to Health Capital Consultants, “over ten years, closing the coverage gap may ultimately cost approximately $32 billion” and the pharmaceutical industry will be forced to take on most of this burden. These companies are paying for the flexibility they’re been given by MMA. They can “set their premiums, design their own formularies and are free to use cost management tools” and Medicare will reimburse plans for a “share of their drug costs.” (Guterman & Huynh ,

According to a study, researchers estimated that the total extra cost to government of providing universal pharmacare could range as high as $5.4 billion a year (11). However, through bulk purchases of medication and other measures, this could be reduced to $1 billion (11). In addition, it is possible that people will misuse or overuse medication if it is easily accessible. However, it is suggested that healthy individuals have no intrinsic value in consuming additional prescription drugs, and studies show little evidence to suggest that excess coverage of prescription drug costs is the root cause of these problems (6).

The subject of healthcare in the United States can be a contentious one, and it is also an area where peoples' perceptions don't always align with the facts given by policymakers. What makes healthcare spending so scandalous is the amount of money the United States pours into healthcare each year. Over $8,000 per-patient per-year costs, amount that has more than double any of the other nation. Yet 15 to 25% of the American population has no healthcare coverage due to a lack of any form of universal

The rise in costs of prescription medicines affects all sectors of the health care industry, including private insurers, public programs, and patients. Spending on prescription drugs continues to be an important health care concern, particularly in light of rising pharmaceutical costs, the aging population, and increased use of costly specialty drugs. In recent history, increases in prescription drug costs have outpaced other categories of health care spending, rising rapidly throughout the latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s. (Kaiseredu.org, 2012).

The United States’ health care system is spiraling out of control as the years pass. Health care costs are increasing, causing more Americans to fall into debt.1 In 2012, the cost per hospital day in the United States was over $12,000 as compared to other countries such as Australia and France, whose cost per hospital day were $1472 and $853 respectively.1 “If the United States health care system was a country, it would be the sixth largest economy on the entire planet.”1 In the comparison of health care and gas, a family of four spends roughly $21,000 on health care while only spending $3000 on gas per year.1 While the cost of health care is rising in the United States, the health of Americans is not increasing. In 2016, the life

My position on national health care spending is way too much monies is going out and not enough people supporting the problem. A universal health care plan for every man, woman, and child who resides in the United States is the most economical way to achieve this goal. All working citizens must have monies automatically taken out of their paychecks and if you can afford more than the basic plan, then there will be plans available that you can upgrade to like Aflac. No matter how poor or how rich you are, everyone has the basic plan and everyone contributes to that plan. In this paper we will discuss the current level of national health care expenditures, the level of spending, where the nation should cut, and how the

Recently, there has been a debate about the high prescription drug prices in the United States. Accounting for 9.7% of the national health expenditure, $329.2 billion was spent on prescription medications ($931 per person) in 2011 (Linton, 2014). So what exactly is the average American getting with their $931? Well, because there is an extraordinary amount of time, effort, and energy that goes into creating, manufacturing, and distributing a new drug, it’s no wonder the prices are so high. But what other costs are folded into the prices of your prescribed medications? This review looks beyond just the research and development costs needed to take a new drug from idea to shelf by examining several journals and other credible, secondary sources, to shed some light on how much pharmaceutical companies are spending to develop, advertise, and sell their drugs.

Steven Brill feels that American health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury and discusses the costs associated with the provision of health care services in the U.S.. The article explores the medical world through the medical expenses incurred by a 64-year-old Janice S., Sean Recchi, A 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio and several other egregiously billed patients. The article poses the question: why exactly are the medical bills so high; in particular hospital bills?