Health Care Inefficiency and Ineffectiveness

Since it has been so long since I have written I wanted to share with you a paper that I just finished for school. Let me know what you think!

Health Care Inefficiency and Ineffectiveness.
Health care is one of the most debated topics of our time. It pulls at the heartstrings of some and questions the personal responsibility of others. It has lead to financial meltdowns for some unlucky individuals plagued with unforeseen diagnoses while concurrently increasing shareholders profits whom many have enough money to cover any unexpected health problem. Everyone has an interest in the way that the system works because individual’s health leads to one’s quality of life. It is unfortunate that the current health care system that is in place in the United States is not working in its current form.
The health care system is both ineffective and inefficient in treating the entire population in a way that is affordable to all involved parties and accessible to all residents. The United States spends more money on health care than any other developed country; in 2004 we spent 16% of GDP on health expenditures. We are outspending countries on health care and our population has worse health than those same countries. Currently our life expectancy and infant mortality is lower than these same countries that spend less on health care. This should be a red flag that signals a major inefficiency within the system.
The current system in the U.S. does not cover all residents and health inequalities and disparities are increasingly visible. This is another example of the inefficiency with the money being spent on health care. I believe that with the obscene amounts of money that are currently being spent on health care could be diverted to offer a system that includes coverage for everyone. The countries that are offering universal health care spend less money than the United States and offer coverage to a larger percentage of the population.
The sole funding of the health care system comes from taxpayers. Almost all residents pay taxes in some form that help contribute to various healthcare programs. It actually goes beyond healthcare programs because the taxpayers are also paying the salaries of our elected public officials who receive health care, and with out the taxpayer they would be without a job and healthcare. It is hard to understand how we got to a point where there are taxpayers paying for others health care and be unable to get care for themselves. The taxpayers also end up paying high costs for bankruptcies which were caused by high medical costs of individuals that were either uninsured or underinsured. I believe that this is one of the major inefficiencies in the current system.
I think that the system became so inefficient and ineffective because of the division of care. Care is divided between the public and private sectors. The two sectors have independent goals that complicate the process further. The private sector aims to make profit and the public sector aims to give care to those who can’t care for themselves. Much of the private sector that offers health care are publicly held, for-profit companies that aim to try and satisfy their stockholder and hold their own self-interest above the moral responsibility of caring for others. Many of these companies have spent millions of dollars creating complicated formulas and business plans that allow certain patients to receive certain types of coverage and others with less or limited coverage. They also offer complicated plans littered with exclusions and exceptions that not only intimidate the consumer but make it extremely difficult to get insurance they may need.
In addition to general inefficiencies of the current system they are also quite ineffective at looking at the possible long-term problems associated with healthcare. The Unites States’ culture is run with a concentration to satisfy short-term needs and reward based on instant gratification. This has proven to be ineffective because we have neglected to look at long-term planning. We now have large proportion of the population being elderly, costing us much of our increased expenditures, and a continued increase of the prevalence of chronic disease that we could have better handled through long term planning and forecasting of population statistics. I don’t think that either the public or private sector thought about this current problem until it was too late and an extreme burden on the system. We are now paying the consequences from our absence of long-term planning and stressing an already stressed to the max system.
In addition to overlooking the long term, we have also lessened the importance of prevention. If we have less people in the system then we have less money going to secondary and tertiary care, thus reducing total costs. It costs much less money to fund a prevention program than to treat a life-threatening, preventable disease. Resources are able to be diverted to areas where they will be put to greater use and thus be more effective in helping to treat patients and save lives. This has been adopted by both public and private organizations on a small scale but needs to be deployed on a large scale in order to make a serious dent in the current crisis.
I believe that the government holds the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the health and quality of their people. The constitution states that a primary role of the government is to promote the general welfare of the people and should continue to try and accomplish this. I don’t believe that the government will, nor should, solve every problem, but I do believe that they have the final say in regards in regulating the system, enforcing laws, and making sure everyone has access to care. I believe that the free market has better abilities to offer health services, perform research, and develop technology but they need guidance, regulation, and laws to abide to.
The government needs to set regulations that will reform our current inefficient and ineffective system. I believe that the government should needs to base their regulations on universal coverage and long term planning. They should enforce regulations that provide affordable coverage to all and make illegal to reject coverage of pre-existing illness.
Although the current standing of the health care system is dismal without reform, it has great potential for improvement. It is the challenge of both the private and public sectors to create ways to succeed in offering universal, comprehensive coverage to all who want it. Health care is a hot topic that will be debated as long as there is a health care system. The lens to look through is not one of doubt but of one certainty. Certainty that there is a solution out there to our current health care crisis that doesn’t eliminate the free market or regulations plan to grant coverage to all.