Friday, December 13, 2013
The Five Biggest Problems In Health Care Today
http://www.forbes.com/sites/leahbinder/2013/02/21/the-five-biggest-problems-in-health-care-today/
1) Too much unnecessary care: This is essentially people playing the system. People abusing health care accounts to 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of total health care; which contributes to the debt our country is already in
2) Avoidable harm to patients: This is the most common health care problem. This is basically a 25% chance that, while at the hospital or doctors office, you will get injured in another way or have some other sort of problem caused at the actual treatment center
3)Billions of dollars are being wasted: According to the "American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology," about 1 billion dollars is wasted every year for unnecessary healthcare costs.
4) Perverse Incentives in How We Pay for Care: This is basically saying that the way we pay for our treatment with a middle man, the insurance company, and with this type of indirect paying type, money is wasted.
5) Lack of Transparency: We don't really have a wide selection of health care buildings as we do car dealers for example. To buy a car you look around and find the cheapest price. When it comes to health care, there is no transparency, referring to we can't exactly look around to find the cheapest hospital. Also, the prices for health care treatments are constantly rising without the public really knowing.
I think the biggest problem is the lack of transparency. This article made a really good point in the fact that no one can really judge health care prices. If more knowledge was given out to the public about the constant rise of health care, then i believe that would slow down the rise. For example, if you go to look at a car and the price is constantly rising, you'll refuse to buy that car if it's overpriced. The dealer will have no other option but to lower his prices or stop rising prices if he wants business. This is an article i believe more people need to look at and realize how ridiculously high the amount of money wasted is. Not only that, but how ridiculous the price of health care is.
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There are more than 5 problems with health care certainly. But I agree; I definitely think the biggest one is the fact that people are paying for stuff that they don't need. Basically it's like buying a black coffee at Starbucks and having to pay for whipped cream and chocolate syrup in the event that the next person can't pay for them. I don't agree with that, and as is made evident by initial Obamacare registration, many others do not agree either.
ReplyDeleteThe last point that the article made is basically the information asymmetry that we learned about. The health care companies know what the prices are and can charge the consumer without telling them anything about the coverage's. I do like David's analogy above and the whole Obamacare system will basically make the entire process worse. The program targets the younger more financially unstable members of society (us in 5 years) in order to cover the elderly patients that need a great deal of health care coverage. I love my grandparents but I feel like you should pay for what you use, not for what others use.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are many problems with the current health care system that have to be fixed. That's why I believe that government involvement will only improve the health care system. There will be more regulations and hopefully less money will be spend on unneeded testing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dave, one of the biggest problems with healthcare costs is definitely excessive spending on unneeded services. But eliminating this wasteful spending could be quite difficult. Would you have insurance companies stop offering HMOs? That might be a tough sell, but it's probably the best way stop wasteful spending.
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