The Paradoxical Underachievement of the U. S. Health Care System

The paradoxical underachievement of the U. S. health care system compared to those of other countries.   The money spent per capita and failure to achieve population outcomes of nations that spend less per capita.  For instance, the U. S. the source of payment is made via private insurance companies, Medicare (residents over 64, the disabled, and those with end-stage renal disease) and Medicaid (state and federal programs for those with low income), other public payers (Veterans Affairs, for military veterans; Tricare, for active duty military personal and their families; Indian Health Services, for indigenous residents), and of course out of pocket expense (Rice, 2014, p 895). 

The expenditures of The United States are 15% of is GDP (gross domestic product) on health care compared with other OECD  (Organization for Economic Co-operation and development) countries.  “Health expenditure has a significant role in most western countries (Hadad, Hadad, & Simon-Tuval, 2013, p 253).”  The U. S. spends 1.8 times as much of its GDP on health care compared to other OECD countries.  As with other business the allocation of funds are delivered in a specific order.  As for the United States, 73% of all health care dollars go to firstly, hospital care, physician services, prescription drugs, and nursing home care (Almgren, 2007, p 79).  The largest expenditure in health care is for administrative cost at 7.4% or $119.7 billion.  The chart below shows the comparison of per category of health care cost related to U. S. spending and that of other OECD countries. 

The costs of various procedures in the U. S. compared with other OECD countries are noticeably higher as shown on the following table.  For instance the cost of an appendectomy is approximately three times higher in the United States (7,962) compared to those in Germany (2,943) or coronary bypass is almost 50% more in the U. S. than in Canada, Australia, and France, and are double the price in Germany.  What is the reason for the difference in prices?  The reason the United States prices are so inflated compared with other OECD countries may be due to costs of legal fees, patients asking for more tests and services, and the more interventions a physician does the more money he or she will make cause the rise of cost (Grillo, 2014).  Of course, health care costs have increased over the past four decades.

           

As stated previously the U. S. has five sources of payment for health care, out-of-pocket expenditures, employment-based private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and public finance programs other than Medicare or Medicaid is the Veterans Administration (Almgren, 2007, p 83).  The main way the United States differs from other OECD countries is there is no universal health care coverage.  The cost of health insurances continue to rise due to increasing prices, the brunt of this cost are administration costs.

            In conclusion, the reason for such high expenditures in the health care system is the lack of a universal health care insurance and the demand for more treatments, more medicine, more procedures, more, more, more.

References

Almgren, G. (2007) Health care politics, policy, and services: A social justice analysis.

New York, NY. Springer Publishing.

Grillo, M. C. (2014) Workplace wellness programs: Are they part of the answer to

the U.S.’s growing healthcare crisis? Cornell HR Review, 1-9.

Hadad, S., Hadad, Y., & Simon-Tuval, T. (2013) Determinants of healthcare system’s

efficiency in OECD countries. European Journal of Health Economics. 14, 253-265.

Rice, T. et al. (2014) Challenges facing the United States of America in implementing

universal coverage. Bull World Health Organ, 9(2), 894-902.