Increasing Health Care Costs: What you have to know

North Americans pay more than one and a half trillion dollars for medical care every year and costs associated with all manner of health care, such as prescription medicines, continue to rocket. While a few of the reasons behind this booming bill are understandable, United States Citizens caught in a cash crunch may be amazed to discover some of the lesser-known reasons for escalating health care costs.

The phrase health care might invoke images of doctors, nurses and hospitals, but the reality is that the medical field is an industry and a pitiless one at that. Individual practitioners, researchers and participants may have marvellous aims and a genuine desire to aid people, but the structure of the U.S. health care system assures profit is the number one issue of importance.

Here is some information that might help explain the soaring costs of US health care:

Pharmaceutic research and development corporations expend about twenty billion dollars each year on R&D, and approximately the same amount on advertising and self-promotional marketing activities.

Additionally, drug companies have as many sales persons as there are doctors in the U S. One of the responsibilities of these sales teams is to convince doctors to go to pharmaceutical company-sponsored seminars where medicines are showcased.

According to some economists, the acquisition of up to date technology is responsible for more than fifty percent of new health care spending over the last three years.

A good deal of the cash United States Citizens pay for health care finds its way into the rising profits on health care-related merchandise and services such as the provision of medical insurance. Even higher costs have been forseen for the future, particularly for prescription drugs.

For many US Citizens who are unable to afford the health care they require, increasing costs symbolise an ever-increasing impedance to medical services and products. The financial effect is also felt on the greater national scale with about fifteen percent of gross domestic product going towards health care costs. That is equal to close to one fourth of the annual federal budget.

Relatively, Canada invests about 10 percent of its Gross domestic product on its public health care program. Unlike the United States, Canadas health care program is universally available to all citizens and permanent residents without cost. Other countries, such as Germany, where there is a public/private delivery system model for health care, manage to serve their citizens for even less while still having greater longevity than North Americans. This proves that the caliber of health care does not rise proportionally with the amount of money spent to achieve it.

While many Canadians supplement their overall health care with extra insurance to the cost of medication and benefits such as semi-private or private hospital rooms, health care insurance is much more essential in the United States. Unfortunately, costs have been increasing dramatically, making health care insurance unreachable for many Americans. Currently, more than 40 million Americans do not receive any type of health care benefit.

For employers, offering health care insurance for workers is also becoming increasingly expensive, with increases dramatically outpacing inflation rates. Some years, the difference is four or six fold. Even if premiums were to remain static, providing health care insurance to their workforce still costs several thousand dollars per worker. For smaller companies, or for the ones that employ a large number of people, these costs can be prohibitive.

Measures to reduce health care costs are always under consideration, though many are not popular options. Suggestions that have been raised by various sources have included:

Extra drug awareness and training. Millions could be saved if health care insurance covered only generic variants of drugs that have been found to be just as effective as their more expensive brand name counterparts.

End expensive treatment choices will only add a short amount of time to a patients life, especially if it will not be quality time (i.e. patient is in a coma).

Encourage preventative care such as smart lifestyle choices, proper nutrition and exercise.

Examine ways to control drug advertising to consumers. There is conjecture that advertising has led to prescriptions of non-necessary drugs.

Restrict malpractice liability so doctors and medical professionals do not feel pressured to cover themselves by ordering unnecessary diagnostics to substantiate conditions they already know to be present.