Healthcare Spending

Healthcare Spending

Introduction

There are some encouraging signs in American health care: a dramatic slowing of health care spending increases, improvements in several key indicators of the health of the American people, and millions of people benefiting from reforms to reduce barriers to affordable health insurance coverage. Nevertheless, health care will continue to pose enormous challenges for policy-makers. Even with almost a decade-long slowdown in annual growth, health care cost increases are expected to rise at an unsustainable level, representing the biggest single contributor to the fiscal crisis facing the federal government. Quality and access to care remain uneven, with significant disparities for ethnic, racial and some demographic groups, and the progress being made in reducing barriers to coverage is at risk.

As we enter a 2012 election that may determine the direction of health care for decades to come, our broken politics make it harder to achieve a national consensus on necessary reforms. Instead of seeking bipartisan solutions, American politics today are characterized by deep ideological polarization, cynical and deceptive attacks on the ideas of others, an aversion to compromise, and a failure of politicians to level with the public about the choices that must be made. Many of the choices being made by politicians to reduce health care spending are the wrong ones, because they endanger rather than improve health care access, quality, and public health and safety. And the political proposals also focus on spending, not cost.

In the history of health care spending the growth of expenditures has plagued the American citizens for several years. The United States of America health care expenditures exceeded 2.3 trillion by 2008. These expenditure growths for the American people were more than three times the amount in 1990, which consisted of $714 billion. Ten years prior to 1990 the health care expenditures was at $253 billion, which illustrates how rapidly health care spending has grown in the United States of America.

In this paper the reader is presented with the current levels of the United States of America health care expenditures comparing it with the Brazilian healthcare spending, and given an explanation of whether the spending is too expensive or not expensive enough. The audience will also be provided with a description on how the public's health care needs are compensated for while signifying the percent of total expenditures they represent. This paper will also provide the reader with a detailed forecast on the future economic needs and requirements of the health care system, and elaborate on why these requirements and needs are required to be addressed and what financing should be taken place in order to deal these issues.

Discussion

The United States of America spends more on health care than any other country does, and studies have shown that 30% of it, more like 700 billion a year has been wasted on unneeded care. This is mostly due to routine CT scans, MRI's, office visits, hospital stays, minor procedures, and brand name prescriptions that are requested by patients and ordered by doctors every ...