We are leaving in one of the most powerful nations in the world and we do not have a decent medical care system. I do not really understand how all this works but I see that in other countries people have more access to health care than here in the United States. In this country doctors and insurances are getting richer every day. In the other side, people are dying every day because they do not have money to pay for hospital and medicines. We need to reduce the medical care costs.
There have been more errors made with drugs and procedures, and hospital stays that can be risky. Healthcare costs are bankrupting small businesses and millions of families and it’s really bad for the country. At the current growth rates, health care spending by the government alone would increase from 5% to 20% of the economy by 2050. Social Security would increase from only 5% to 6%. There is no proven link between more spending and better care.
The importance goes further to the core of the problem focusing on the nurse and evaluating what is needed to be done in order to educate this patient group. The research problem involves nurses who are not comfortable discussing end-of-life issues with their patients and is identified in the first few paragraphs of the article. This is a significant problem nurses and doctors can educate, manage and monitor for these chronic patients. The purpose is not clearly stated in the study, but is inferred within the abstract of the article as well. Patients and families dealing with potential end-of-life issues is a very common problem in health care today.
The results of this study came out to be exactly what they were afraid of. It is not a coincidence that the referral rate is higher in physician owned practices. This initiation of therapy by the physician clearly proves that they are in it for simply for the money and not for the health of the patient. 575 million dollars each year is lost in California due to physical therapy compensation costs and “generates approximately $233 million per year in services delivered for economic rather than clinical reasons.” This is hurting everyone involved as well as many who are not involved. Each state as a whole is losing much needed money and it is going down the drain due to these physician owned practices.
The significant difference between the rates of health insurance cost increases and wage and inflation increases creates a problem in itself. Not only are there millions of people without health insurance, it is becoming more likely that they will not be able to afford to hold insurance policy. However, in a 2002 study it was found that only 30% of the uninsured were below federal poverty levels (Overview of the U.S. Health Care System). This means that despite the unsettling amounts of people in poverty without health insurance, there is also the issue of those who have the means to provide themselves and their families with health insurance and choose not to, only to be faced with crippling health bills should anything go wrong. Navigating and deciphering the complicated health insurance industry is too daunting and expensive a task to leave up to individuals, which is why in many cases, the United States government and private organizations have stepped in.
Sutter Health’s Retooling of Accounts Receivable October 18, 2010 An increasing issue within healthcare is the inability to collect debt from the rising levels of uninsured or underinsured and patient payment obligations which have put increased pressure on hospitals to maximize up-front cash collections. Today in the United States there are nearly 47 million Americans uninsured and 80 percent of those come from working families. Hospitals incur over $60 billion dollars in bad debt annually because they typically collect only ten to twenty percent of a total uninsured patient balance after service. This is due to a number of reasons, including poor accounting practices, a lack of correct patient information and a lack of generated reports. This paper will discuss how one company, California’s Sutter Health,
As economic conditions are anticipated to gradually improve during this period, private health insurance spending is projected to grow 3.5 percent on average. However, this growth in private health insurance spending is dampened somewhat by continued consumer cost sensitivity related to low income growth, employer efforts to control costs, and several prescription drug patent expirations. Further, Medicare spending is predicted to slow from 5.9 percent in 2012 to 1.3 percent in 2013 due to both a scheduled 30.9-percent physician payment rate reduction mandated under the Sustainable Growth Rate Formula, and an additional 2-percent payment reduction across all providers from the sequester under the Budget Control Act of
As shown in Source E, the people with more income are for getting rid of the penny, while the more poor people are against the abolishment. This is probably because the more upper class people do not have to pay for simple things with the pennies they find on the streets. Poorer people who make less than $25,000 a year obviously don’t have good jobs, probably not full coverage health insurance, and a lot of the time, have more children to take care of. Due to the insurance they have, their prescriptions and doctor co pays are very expensive. Penny pinching may be these deprived people’s only option in paying bills.
California Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Rhonda Barkey HCA 415 Community & Public Health Dr. John Moore July 9, 2012 Quality healthcare insurance can be hard to come by for a large majority of the American population. There are those who cannot get quality healthcare for reasons such as affordability or a pre-existing condition, but those that do have access to medical insurance, either through their employer or from a private vendor, are paying extremely high prices and oftentimes the benefits are limited. Our government, both local and federal, is spending billions of dollars every year to help individuals who have no access to healthcare. The red tape that one has to go through to get access to these government-funded
AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE The Healthcare Industry is a 2.8 trillion dollar industry. From issues like personal bank-ruptcy, overpaid executives in the healthcare industry, inconsistent pricing from health care pro-viders and hospitals and patients not able to afford to have health care, there was a need for health care reform. Due to several inefficiencies that drove up the cost of healthcare, a reduced standard of care to patients, and Americans that could not afford to have health care, the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. Some of the key goals of the ACA were to reduce the rate of health care spending and the burden it placed on families, businesses, employers and state and federal budgets as well as improving the quality of care provided to patients. One of the provisions in the ACA is that all Americans are required to have health insurance.