Health Care Cost

It’s no secret that health care costs have been rising dramatically for years. Nowadays, they are excessively high, which what has caused the political reevaluation of the health care system and of health care cost itself. It’s the major reason behind the outcry for the United States to catch up to other industrialized nations and offer free health care.

Several studies on the subject of health care cost concluded that this seemingly endless rise in health care costs finds its roots in the removal of the patient as a main player in the financial and medical choices currently being made by others in the patient’s name. Third-party players such as insurance companies and governments are paying more and more medical bills and parts of these medical bills and this has resulted in disaster.

Patients overuse medical resources since they appear to be free or almost free. Producers of medical equipment create new and more expensive devices, even if they’re only of marginal benefit, because these third-party players are creating a guaranteed market. All the attempts to rein in these costs have led to mountains of paperwork that are horribly ineffective at controlling health care costs.

The obvious solution then to reduce health care cost is to return the patient to the center stage and make him the main actor in the medical marketplace. Patients need to be given the same motivations to economize on medical care that they have to economize in other markets. Tax laws need rewriting and the use of medical savings accounts needs to be promoted. Not to mention, high deductible health insurance needs to be encouraged.

But mainly giving the patient back his importance is what would bring health cost back under control.

There are other theories about what to do about health care cost and how has it been driven up so high as well. One states that the causes are actually varied and deep-rooted. Almost all economists though would agree that the main driver of high medical spending and high health care cost is our wealth here in America. We’re richer than other nations and willing to spend more, even if it’s far above what mere wealth would predict.

Thus, hospitals and doctors are paid more here than in other countries and American rely more on costly specialists who overuse CT scans and MRI machines and also resort to more costly surgical and medical procedures. Insurance incentives entice doctors and patients to use more medical services than warranted and then there’s the whole amount of money the fragments system of insurers and providers consume in administrative costs and marketing expenses.

Bringing down the costs of health insurance benefits would include cutting costs so the entire nation matches the medical spending of its lower-spending regions, having doctors stick to the medical procedures that are proven to work best, introduce more managed care, take advantage of information technology to a greater degree, invest more in prevention of illness or injury, and more disease management.

No matter which theory is correct, something needs to be done about health care cost soon.