Increasing Health care costs!!

Health care costs have been rising in the U.S. due to many reasons, which include administrative costs as well as excessive profits. From the Frontline documentary, the U.S. spends the greatest percentage of health care costs on administration services. In contrast, we see countries like Taiwan only spending about 2.2% of their health care cost on administration. A great deal of how they reduced administrations costs was by implementing an electronic system for medical records for each citizen, making it easy to access medical records and prescription history for medical professionals—thus saving time and money. It is staggering how much inefficiency in the administration of health care can lead to increased costs. In addition, excessive profits are also one of the primary reasons why health care costs are rising. CEOs and other executives of hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies are making enormous profit off of health care services. However, there are other factors that contribute to the rising cost of health care. To start off, the fact that the U.S. is a developed country, has a very minimal threat of infectious disease, and a higher rate of chronic disease is one of the main reasons why health care costs are rising. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes—are diseases that require a great deal of health care services, medical technology, medication, and hospitalization. If the population of the U.S. is more affected with these and other types of chronic disease, the overall average cost of care per person would be higher compared to a person in a developing country, where basic sanitation would get rid of a particular disease. In addition, the baby boomers are now at the age where chronic disease is at a staggering high—thus, a larger percentage of the population is suffering from a chronic disease. An article I read on California Healthline stated “According to Mercer, the average deductible for a single person between 2003 to 2007 increased from $250 to $400 and from $1,000 to $1,500 for a family for the same period.” The high steep slope of this increase is staggering, and with gas prices this high and the economy in trouble, the cost of health care is not going to be decreasing anytime soon unless there is a major health care reform change. Some things that can reduce health care costs are preventive care services. With chronic disease being the number one health care cost, more preventive care will decrease chronic disease rates, thus decrease the amount spent on controlling these types of diseases.