Tuesday, June 4, 2013
US Health Care
It is almost unbelievable that there are that many countries who are doing better than the U.S. in the healthcare realm. The infant and adult mortality rates really make you think about whats going on, and mainly how are we as a country going to fix it. I really like the part where it mentions guarding households from destitution from medical expenses. In my opinion that is one of our biggest problems that needs to be solved. First the average American family has to budget low on groceries to afford some kind of insurance, and then their bank accounts are wiped out with one little emergency. I wonder how in depth that study went and if it looked into the causes of death in all those mortality rates. I am not down playing the study, but I would have a few more questions. In these other countries how many of them have soda and candy available on every corner? How many of them have all you can eat buffets at a high percentage of restaurants. What does the average families normal diet look like, and how much stress is placed on the bread winner at their place of employment? Are most of the families struggling to make ends meet, or do they have a decent amount of disposable income? With all that said I think my biggest question is, how does the lifestyle of these mortality rates compare from country to country. Again, just some questions to further understand the numbers.
US Healthcare
US Healthcare
The World Health Report 2000, Health Systems: Improving
Performance, ranked the U.S. health care system
37th in the world, a result that has been discussed frequently during
the current debate on U.S. health care reform and the passage of the PCAA.
Evidence shows that 36 other countries perform better than the US in ensuring
the health of their residents. The framework of the WHO rankings proposed
that health systems should be assessed by comparing the extent to which public
health and medical care were contributing to serious social objectives; such as
improving health, decreasing health disparities, guarding households from destitution
due to increasing medical expenses, and providing services that are responsive
and that respect the dignity of patients.
Many people the U.S. health arena claim
that international comparison is not useful because of the uniqueness of the
United States. With that said Murray;
etal. stated in 2010, “It is hard to ignore that in 2006, the United States was
number 1 in terms of health care spending per capita but ranked 39th for infant
mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and
36th for life expectancy.
These facts have fueled a question now being discussed in academic circles, as
well as by government and the public: Why do we spend so much to get so little?
Reference
Murry,
C., Phil, D., & Frenk, J. (2010, January 14). Ranking 37th — Measuring the
Performance
of the U.S. Health Care System. In The
New England Journal of Medicine.
Retrieved
June 4, 2013, from http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0910064
Getting Back to Primary Care
Learning Module 1- U.S. Healthcare System- Cheryl
McGehee
The U.S. healthcare costs are the
highest in the world according to one study but, our mortality rate is nothing
to get excited about (Bates, 2010).
According to this article, countries that focus more on primary care,
afforded to a majority of their population, have much better outcomes. Overall
satisfaction with primary care physicians is low in the U. S. and steadily on
the decrease (Bates, 2010). This means that we are quickly moving toward a specialist
based system rather than primary. One
major reason given for this discrepancy in cost to outcome is the fact that
primary care treats the patient as a whole, whereas a patient may have to see
many different specialty physicians at once, if plagued with multiple chronic
conditions. Another reason is that to be able to practice as a primary
physician means doctors must keep up with more and more information, which is
constantly changing and sometimes overwhelming, especially in a large, busy
practice. These facts also make it unattractive for new medical students to
make the decision to go into primary care. Some changes have already started,
for instance, the Affordable Care Act has slated the primary payment schedule
to increase by 10% (Bates, 2010). This may not be enough incentive to keep or
attract new doctors to the field. Primary care could also potentially cut
healthcare cost due to omission of duplicate testing and diagnostic procedures,
initiated through our current process of multiple specialty physicians
necessitating the delivery of their own unique treatments to an individual
chronically ill patient (Bates, 2010). Adding to this every growing problem is
the fact that the baby boomer generation is causing a shift in number of aging
Americans, daily. Overall it would be beneficial for the U.S. to take a hard
look at ways to support directing the physician care of our nation back to
primary versus specialty care.
References
Bates, D. (2010). Primary care and the us health care
system: What needs to change? Journal of General Internal Medicine, 25(10),
998-999. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11606-010-1464-0
That is absolutely amazing how much money is wasted in the healthcare system. I agree that the entire world could stand to benefit from us using even a small amount of that money for research, or even lowering medical bills and the rising cost of insurance. My employer offers medical insurance, but it is almost unaffordable for most of the employees. I was able to obtain insurance for my wife and son through a private company that sells for all the major insurers for 25% of the employer cost, and has the same if not better benefits. I also agree that the repeated tests and exams are just silly, one would think that your records should just follow you from office to office. On the other hand I know that many of the repeats are do to the legal ramifications. It seems that in the healthcare field every thing we touch causes us more liability and the possibility of getting sued. I believe that the possibility of legal recourse is what causes most of the repeats that we deal with. For example even though the repeated blood work will go to the exact same lab as the previous one, each physician wants to be able to say he or she did a thorough enough exam to back their diagnoses. It is kind of a catch 22 and not good for consumers, but something needs to be done about that much waste. I wish that I had a few answers, but I don't.
US Healthcare
Bianca Zinno
Module 1
US Healthcare System
This article is about the waste and misuse of funds in the US healthcare system. Thirty cents of every dollar spent in the healthcare system is wasted (Lowry,2012). That comes to a grand total of $750 billion annually (Lowry, 2012).What a large amount of money that is wasted! That amount would cover 150 million workers, the 2008 bailout, or the budget for the Department of Defense (Lowry, 2012).Of this $750 billion, $210 is spent on things that are likely unnecessary, like repeated tests (Lowry, 2012). For example, a lab test that is unnecessary or has been done recently. If a patient had their cholesterol checked, and a month later changes doctors who repeats this test. $130 million is spent on services that could be done cheaper elsewhere, like x-rays done in an ER rather than in a doctor’s office (Lowry, 2012).Going to a minor emergency clinic like CareNow for a broken toe, for example, instead of the ER, would save money. $75 billion is spent working on healthcare fraud, and $190 billion is spent on paperwork (Lowry, 2012). With all of the recent talk of healthcare reform, the government should also find a way to make sure that the funds spent on healthcare are not wasted like they are in our current healthcare system. Hopefully, something can be done to curb these extraneous costs. Think of the additional research and treatment that could be done on our patients if this money would be put to good use, other than wasting it on things like unnecessary repeat testing and finding better ways to reduce healthcare fraud. People’s lives could be saved because of the additional research and new therapies that could be discovered. Not only that, our personal health insurance costs could go down. Lower premiums would allow for more families to be able to afford insurance.
Works Cited:
Lowry, Annie. (2012, Sept 11).US Healthcare Finds Both Waste and Opportunity to Improve.
U.S. Healthcare System
This week the blog will feature posts on the U.S. Healthcare System as a whole.
Posts will focus on different aspects of the U.S. Healthcare System.
We look forward to your comments.
Posts will focus on different aspects of the U.S. Healthcare System.
We look forward to your comments.
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