Increasing Health Care Costs: What you need to know

United States Citizens pay more than one and a half trillion dollars for medical care each year and costs related to all types of health care, such as prescription medicines, continue to increase at an enormous rate. While a few of the reasons behind this booming bill are comprehensible, US Citizens caught in a cash crunch might be surprised to discover some of the lesser-known reasons for high health care costs.

The phrase health care can invoke images of doctors, nurses and hospitals, but the reality is that the medical field is an industry and a remorseless one at that. Individual practitioners, researchers and participants may have fantastic intentions and a true need to aid people, but the structure of the American health care system assures profit is the number one issue of importance.

Here are some facts that may assist in explaining the high costs of American health care:

Pharmaceutical research and development corporations expend about $20 billion each year on R&D, and around the same amount on advertising and self-promotional marketing activities.

Additionally, drug companies have as many sales people as there are doctors in america. 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 new technology is responsible for more than 50 percent of new health care spending over the previous 3 years.

A good deal of the hard cash US Citizens pay for health care finds its way into the spiraling profits on health care-related products and services such as the supply of medical insurance. Even higher costs have been forseen for the future, especially for prescription drugs.

For many North Americans who are not able to afford the health care they require, increasing prices represent an ever-increasing impedance to medical services and merchandise. The financial effect is also experienced on the larger national scale with about 15 percent of gross domestic product going toward health care costs. That is equal to about a fourth of the yearly federal budget.

Comparatively, Canada invests in the area of 10 percent of its Gross domestic product on its public health care program. Unlike the USA, 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 populate for even less while still having better longevity than US Citizens. This proves that the quality of health care does not rise proportionally with the amount of money spent to attain it.

While many Canadians supplement their universal 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 necessary in the United States. Unfortunately, costs have been spiraling dramatically, making health care insurance unreachable for many Americans. Presently, more than 40 million Americans do not receive any type of health care benefit.

For employers, providing health care insurance for their workforce 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 employees 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.

Steps to shrink health care costs are always under consideration, though many are not popular options. Suggestions that have been put forward by various sources have included:

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

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

Encourage preventative care such as smart lifestyle alternatives, 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 tests to confirm conditions they already know to be present.