Health Care Paradox

Compared to other developed nations, the United States healthcare system produces worse health outcomes for its citizens even though it spends the most amount of spending on the healthcare. Health outcomes measure the length and quality of life for the people. Health outcomes are measured in the average life expectancy as well as other metrics like the infant mortality rate and types of diseases that are endemic a country. And so we look to the social institutions that set up the structure for cultural behavior and the responses to the problems it may face in order to see why America fares so poorly. Our main focus is with the medical institution and the inequality that is built within the system.

The health care system that an individual interacts with determines not only the health coverage that they receive, but has many larger implications such as the effect on quality of life. General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the World Health Organization Director, states that “ The main message from this report is that the health and well- being of people around the world depend critically on the performance of the health systems that serve them.” (WHO, 2000). Luckily, health care systems are always under a microscope to make them more cost effective as well as benefit their users. However, what is effective for one population may not be the case in another which is also true on a person-to-person basis.

Health care should not be considered a political argument in America; it is a matter of basic human rights. Something that many people seem to forget is that the US is the only industrialized western nation that lacks a universal health care system. The National Health Care Disparities Report, as well as author and health care worker Nicholas Conley and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), strongly suggest that the US needs a universal health care system. The most secure solution for many problems in America, such as wasted spending on a flawed non-universal health care system and 46.8 million Americans being uninsured, is to organize a national health care program in the US that covers all citizens for medical necessities.

In the film Escape Fire the Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, there were many insightful examples of why our Unites States healthcare revolves around paying more and getting less. The system is designed to treat diseases rather than preventing them and promoting wellness. In our healthcare industry, there are many different contributors that provide and make up our system. These intermediaries include suppliers, manufacturers, consumers, patients, providers, policy and regulations. All these members have a key role in the functionality of the health care industry; however, each role has its positives and negatives.

Health Care in the US is arguably available to all who seek it but not everybody has had the same experience and treatment when walking through the doors of a healthcare facility. In many cases, people are discriminated against due to their gender, race/ethnicity, age, and income and are often provided with minimal service. Differences between groups in health coverage, access to care, and quality of care is majorly affected through these disparities. Income is a major factor and can cause groups of people to experience higher burden of illness, injury, disability, or mortality relative to another group.

Introduction People hope and seeks long and healthier lives. Thus, health care is the act of taking preventative or necessary medical procedures to improve people well-being. Improvement or preventative may be done with surgery, the administering of medicine, or other alterations in a person 's lifestyle. These services are usually offered through a health care system made up of hospitals and physicians. Although, the health care system is set up to reduce or to prevent disease etc., there is a gap or disparity in the US health care system.

Steven Brill’s Bitter Pill: “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” by Angelina Salikhbaeva Summary: Steven Brill in the article “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” clarifies his opinion about the costs of healthcare services in the United States. The author writes about different stories of how families become bankrupt or unable to pay the total cost of the treatment to the US hospitals and related medical facilities. According to Steven Brill’s article, the US hospitals prescribe too much health care to patients.

Health is a fundamental good that cannot be bought within a market. The influencing factors within a society are: the “genetic” inheritance, the lifestyle, the environment and the healthcare services. Why is there a healthcare demand? Healthcare services are demanded to be consumed but they also represent an investment. We all want a better health, because we all have psychological benefits from good health, whereas if we were sick, there would be negative impacts. We all want a better health, because if we are well, we can work and earn money, whereas our income would suffer if we were sick.

As Bernie Sanders once said, “Health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege.” Most developed countries choose to live by this quote while the United States of America chooses to go against it. Universal health care has benefits on multiple levels, whether it’s a single individual or the people in a whole. The U.S is one of the few developed countries that doesn’t offer universal health care to their people, yet the U.S spends more than seventeen percent of their GDP on health insurance. Many people believe that universal health care is a simple one solution problem, but the truth is that there are multiple forms of universal health care that provide all citizens with the health insurance they need.

Cost containment remains an elusive goal in U.S. health services delivery due to the numerous reasons of the rising costs of health services and why people and society do not want to lower cost. Health care services costs are rising to recover the cost of research, technology, malpractice insurance, medical equipment, medical school, pharmaceutical research and development, and the trend of medical specialties. Technology has been one of the main reasons for rising costs, because of acquiring new equipment, training people to use it, maintenance, and space for the equipment. Another reason is defensive medicine, where doctors order more testing and require additional appointments to prevent being sued. Moral hazard drives costs up since people will use more services because they are covered by insurance. Lastly, the biggest underlying factor increasing cost is our fee-for-service (FFS) system, developed in 1920s. FFS is patients paying providers for each individual service and after the service is provided, called retrospective payment. Therefore, physicians focus on providing quantity of services, including unnecessary services, rather than on quality. A solution to lower cost would be to

Health care competition,and patient satisfaction inside the health care business, competition impact numerous relational perspective; with numerous study reporting the impact of greater than before competition. For example several study have examine the relationships between competition and class of health care among competition and health care method costs and between competition and patient fulfillment. These studies explain that competition is accomplished of increasing importance for clients over time. superiority and process improvement lead to decrease costs, which in revolve results in increased client satisfaction. This paper review relevant prose and develops a model that can be use to empirically consider a number of difficult issues

Many Americans were led to believe that the introduction of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2009 would put an end to disparities in health care access. While it did improve the situation for a small percentage of the population there are still many Americans who lack access to good quality health care. Health care access in America is determined by money and those in lower socioeconomic groups frequently tend to miss out on adequate care. In a recent health care report by the national health research foundation Kaiser Family Foundation, it was noted “health care disparities remain a persistent problem in the United States, leading to certain groups being at higher risk of being uninsured, having limited access to care, and experiencing poorer quality of care” (Kaiser Family Foundation). The current health care

Competition should lead to lower costs and better quality of services, but, unfortunately, the US spends more money per capita than any other advanced country and has poor outcomes for many health indicators. Further, the US has poorer outcomes for many health indicators than other countries. In the United States in 2012, the cost of healthcare per person averaged about $9000 per year. In 2012, data from CMS stated that the total spending on healthcare in 2012 was $2.8 trillion (1). Despite competition in the health care field, two of the very prominent reasons for high costs are high administrative costs, the use of costly new technologies and drugs, and unhealthy behavior on (some, not all) of the patients’ behalves.

The film, “Escape Fire” highlights important problems of the health care system today and the roots of these problems. One of the first problems that the movie brings up is the cost of health care The US spends more than 2.7 trillion dollars per year on health care, which is a strikingly higher number than spent in other countries and yet other countries who spend much less have a higher life expectancy and overall health in their populations. I found this very shocking, because while I knew that the government spends a lot on health care I didn’t realize that, despite the exorbitant costs, our overall health was actually much worse than other countries. The movie examines the reasons for this discrepancy and notes that most of the money

Inequitable distribution of healthcare between rural and remote areas is an intractable global problem. Rural communities are in generally sicker, less educated and have higher healthcare needs; however irony is that urban communities receive better healthcare and funding in the budget by the government. Hart’s ‘inverse care law’ states that these with the greatest need of healthcare usually have the worst access to healthcare (Wilson, 2009). Inequitable healthcare is recognised as one of the major reasons for rapid urbanisation. Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) performed a systematic review with an objective to evaluate impact of various strategies to recess the inequitable healthcare between rural and urban areas.