Spiraling Health Care Costs: What you need to know

North Americans pay more than 1.5 trillion dollars for medical care each year and costs related to all manner of health care, such as prescription medicines, continue to accelerate. While some of the reasons behind this booming bill are comprehensible, Americans caught in a cash crunch may be amazed to learn some of the lesser-known reasons for escalating health care costs.

The phrase health care may invoke images of doctors, nurses and hospitals, but the reality is that the medical field is a business and a ruthless one at that. Individual practitioners, researchers and participants may have fantastic intentions and a genuine need to help people, but the structure of the U.S. health care system assures profit is the highest issue of importance.

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

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

Also, drug companies have as many sales persons as there are doctors in the U.S.. One of the duties of these sales teams is to convince doctors to go to their company-sponsored seminars where drugs are showcased.

According to some economic experts, the purchase of new technology is responsible for more than fifty percent of new health care outlay over the last three years.

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

For many North Americans who are unable to afford the health care they require, spiraling prices typify an ever-increasing impedance to medical services and merchandise. The fiscal burden is also found on the greater national scale with about 15 percent of gross domestic product going toward health care costs. That is equal to about a quarter of the annual federal budget.

Comparatively, Canada invests around 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, in which there is a public/private delivery system model for health care, manage to serve their populations for even less while still having greater longevity than North Americans. This proves that the quality of health care does not increase 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 essential in the United States. Unfortunately, costs have been rising dramatically, making health care insurance inaccessible for many Americans. Presently, more than forty million Americans do not receive any kind of health care benefit.

For employers, providing 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 unchanging, providing health care insurance to employees still costs several thousand dollars per worker. For smaller companies, or for those that employ a large number of people, these costs can be prohibitive.

Measures to bring down 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 instruction. Millions could be saved if health care insurance covered only generic variations of drugs that have been proven just as effective as their more expensive brand name counterparts.

Stop expensive treatment alternatives will only add a small period 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 alternatives, proper nutrition and exercise.

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

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