I would like to
bring your attention to the current state of healthcare in our country. We have a problem with rising health care
costs. Even those with insurance are
getting huge bills from hospitals and physicians. These costs are starting to cause people not
to want to go to the doctor or hospital for fear of it causing them to go into
bankruptcy. In 2010 health care costs
neared approximately 2.6 trillion dollars ("U.s. health care,"
2012). Total expenditure of health care
accounts for about 18% of the total domestic product. 51% of these costs come from hospital and
physician costs. Another factor adding
to these increased costs is that since 2001 insurance premiums have increased
113%. There have been a few different
reforms proposed to combat these rising costs and even to help those that are
uninsured. These include socialized medicine,
free-market health care and tort reform.
One
solution that is popular is reforming our health care is to go to a socialized
or nationalized form of health care delivery.
The advantage of this system is universal coverage (Messerli, n.d.). Currently there is an estimated 45 million
individuals without insurance, including illegals, and socialized medicine will
cover all of them. This system of reform
will also reduce paper work as there will be one set that will need to be done
for one form of insurance. There will
also be just one entity paying for the health care, that would be the
government, so there will be no cost to the individual.
There
are also several downsides to nationalized health care. The first is the fact that free is not really
free (Messerli, n.d.). The American
people will still be paying for it through increased taxes which in the long
run will really hurt the economy causing more loss of jobs. Also, there really is no government agency
that runs efficiently and do we really want the same types of people that write
the tax code and run the post office or DMV running our health care? Another issue is that government run health
care can lead to an increased loss of personal freedoms with the government
passing more restrictions on what we can and cannot due/eat/drink in an effort
to lower health care costs.
Socialized
medicine is something that many other nations have tried in an attempt to lower
health care costs. One such nations is
England with the National Health Service.
This system is full of careless staff and long waits. There are frequent stories coming from
England about people that have had to wait in ambulances for hours. However a story that stands out is that of a
young man that actually called police from his hospital bed because he was
thirsty (Ellicott, 2012). He ended up
dying just a few hours later of dehydration.
There is also another story where doctors actually have to prescribe
drinking water to try and prevent deaths due to dehydration (Smith, 2011). According to the Patients Association in
England, there are thousands that have suffered from sub-standard care
resulting in approximately 1200 deaths in just one hospital alone (Smith,
2009). Total around the nation is over 1
million complaints of cruelty from nurses and other staff. This is definitely something to consider when
looking at this style of healthcare here in our country.
Another
possible solution to the current health care situation in our country is one
that I feel we should really look at.
That is a free-market approach to health care. The current problem with health care is
caused because of government intervention (Richmond, 1992). Through regulations and masking the true
costs of health care it has just kind of gotten in the way and taken the
control of health care away from the consumers of the health care. A free market solution will get the
government out of the way and put the consumer in charge of their own health
care. They would also be in charge of
paying for their own health care.
Americans
currently only pay for approximately 12% of their health care, the rest is paid
for by the government and insurance companies (Palumbo, 2011). If individuals actually had to pay for all of
their health care the prices would plummet and they would also be more likely
to take better care of themselves with their lifestyles and preventative
medicine to lower the costs on themselves even further. Another reason for the lower costs would be
the competition for patients between hospitals, clinics and physicians; it
would force them to lower costs and increase quality of care for the
patients.
One
possible problem with the free-market solution is access for the poor and the
elderly to good quality health care. My
solution for this is letting the physicians and the hospitals keep their
non-profit status if they wish to. In order to keep this status they still have
to provide services pro-bono for those that qualify, i.e. the poor and the
elderly. They can also use these
services in public relations and marketing to gain for consumers of their
services. Americans are more willing to
give their business to companies that are involved in charity than those that
are not. Another solution is along the
same lines, but there will also be a development of health care charities to
find a way to provide health care to those that cannot otherwise afford
it. There are also many faith based
hospitals that have it in their mission to provide quality health care to those
that would otherwise not be able to afford it.
The
most important way to lower costs, however, is through tort reform. Every year frivolous law suits with no basis
in science or fact add over 100 billion dollars to the cost of health care
(Becker, 2012). This leads to an increase
in malpractice insurance that physicians and hospitals end up having to
pay. Approximately 50% of a physician’s
private practice income goes to pay for medical malpractice just to protect
their livelihoods. This is something
that does need to be addressed to lower these costs. If the cost of medical malpractice can be
lowered, which it can through tort reform, then the cost of health care will
also drop.
These
are three possible solutions. The only
ones that make complete sense to go with and will lower costs for everyone and
also reduce the national debt is the free-market approach the health care and
also tort reform.
References
Becker, T. (2012, March 12). Without
tort reform, health care costs will keep rising. Retrieved from http://www.swarthmorephoenix.com/2012/03/01/opinions/without-tort-reform-health-care-costs-will-keep-rising
Ellicott, C. (2012, July 3). Patient
dying of thirst rang 999: Inquest hears of mother's fury at nurses who neglected son. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2167643/Patient-dying-thirst-rang-999-Inquest-hears-mothers-fury-nurses-neglected-son.html?printingPage=true
Messerli, J. (n.d.). Should the
government provide free universal health care for all americans?. Retrieved from http://www.balancedpolitics.org/universal_health_care.htm
Palumbo, M. (2011, December 17). How
the free market can cure health care read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/how_the_free_market_can_cure_health_care.html
Richmond, S. (1992, June). A
free market for health care. Retrieved from http://www.fff.org/freedom/0692c.asp
Smith, R. (2009, August 27). 'cruel
and neglectful' care of one million nhs patients exposed. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6092658/Cruel-and-neglectful-care-of-one-million-NHS-patients-exposed.html
Smith, W. (2011, May 29). Nhs
meltdown: Doctors prescribe drinking water to prevent elderly deaths. Retrieved from http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/05/29/nhs- meltdown-doctors-prescribe-drinking-water-to-prevent-elderly-deaths/
U.s. health care costs.
(2012). Retrieved from http://www.kaiseredu.org/issue-modules/us-health-care-costs/background-brief.aspx
