Cost of Care

Cost of Health Care

Among developed countries , the U .S . spends the most for health care with over-all government and per capita spending steadily rising within the past years to reach 2 .0 trillion in 2005 translated to 6 ,697 per person (ACP , 2008 . The cost of health care is the amount the government through its programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and individual consumers as well , spend for health care . It can also be seen in the rapidly increasing expenses for drugs , treatments , technologies and health insurance premiums . Health care spending

is estimated to double by 2015 and will drain Medicare funds (ACP , 2008

High spending for health care has not translated into a healthier populace , however . The higher rates of insurance premiums have led employers to cut down on their costs for this benefit and have passed on a larger portion or even the entire costs to their employees . This has led to the increase in the uninsured and underinsured who , having limited finances for out-of-the-pocket health expenses , give up preventive or maintenance treatments until their medical conditions worsen (Colliver , 2004 . They then end up in hospital emergency rooms where the costs for their care are mainly shouldered by government

There are also other factors that contribute to the rising costs of health care such as lack of government regulation on the health care industry and the prices of health services and products , the aggressive use of treatments by physicians to include various tests or procedures that are not medically necessary but would serve to protect doctors from malpractice and the expenses for the health care bureaucracy , such as hospital administrative costs , passed on to consumers (Colliver , 2004

In to mitigate the high costs of health care (1 ) the government should attempt regulation of the health care industry in to put a cap on prices of related goods such as health insurance and medicines and (2 ) the government should provide for universal access to health care which could be achieved using different strategies in to decrease the number of underinsured or uninsured and prevent the kind of negative health practices they adopt (ACP , 2008 and Colliver , 2004 List of References

ACP (American College of Physicians (2008 . Achieving a High-Performance Health Care System with Universal Access : What the U .S . Can Learn from Other Countries . Annals of Internal Medicine 148 (1 . Retrieved 28 April 28 , 2008 from http /www .annals .org /cgi /content /full /v1

Colliver , V (2004 . In Critical Condition : Health Care in America How the Health Care System is Failing and Why it 's Hard to Fix . The San Francisco Chronicle . Retrieved 28 April 2008 from HYPERLINK "http /www .sfgate .com /cgi- " http /www .sfgate .com /cgi- bin /article .cgi /c /a /2004 /10 /11 /MNGII96CVP1 .DTL...