Health Care Costs

The Impact of the Cost of Health Care on Economy

Introduction

Health care is one of the most important and crucial facility that is provided to the citizens of any country. The importance of health care cannot be neglected in any society, any culture ad any country. It is a pre requisite for all the other socio-economic activities of the individual. The recent years have seen a considerable increase in the health care spending in the United States of America. The relationship between the spending in the sector of health care and its impact on the economy of United States are a multidimensional, as well as, a complicated thing. The increase in health care spending can be viewed in two dimensions. The first is the weight that it puts on the economic growth in a broad sense, and second is the fact that it is a driver of local and sectoral prosperity. This assignment will discuss the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the areas impacted by health care legislation, the health insurance types in the U.S and the longevity of each type over the next 30 years. The paper will also throw light on the evolution of the promotion of health and disease prevention in the U.S.

Discussion

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

GDP is the total of the market value of all the final services and goods that are produced inside a country, within a given range of time. The products and services that are included in the Gross Domestic Product needs to be officially recognized by the government of the country. Gross domestic product is one of the factors of determining the standard of living of the people of any country. The health of the economy of a country can be understood and estimated by the Gross domestic product of the country. In simpler terms, it is the size of the economy if a country. Gross domestic product is expressed as a comparison to the past GDPs of the country. Measuring Gross domestic product is not an easy task. As a basic calculation for the Gross domestic product, one can add up the income of all the people in the country, or add the expenditures of all the people in the country. Both these figures will roughly be the same.

Dollar 2 trillion is the amount that the government of United States spends on the health care expenses annually. This is more than any other industrialized country of the world. The health care costs are soaring day by day. If they are kept under control, then there is no way that the country cannot manage the debt (Ault, 2009). President Obama signed the US health care reform law in 2010. This included aims to make the health care more accessible and less expensive. The spending on health care is growing at a rapid rate. It is currently fifteen times more than the growth of the gross domestic product of the country. It makes around twenty percent of the economy of the United ...