Health Care Spending in the USA - Research Paper Example

? Health Care spending in United s Health Care in United s spending has continued to outmatch the other country’s expenditure on health care. Since the failure of the health care proposals by President Clinton and his administration, the United States has been looking for means and ways on how to control the high expenditure on health care. Health care is rendered by various distinguished legal bodies. According to Peterson and Burton (2008) health care facilities in United States of America is largely operated and owned by the private segment. Health insurance in the public sector is chiefly offered by the government. Approximately, 60-65 percent of health care spending and planning comes from Medicaid, Tricare and Medicare (Peterson & Burton, 2008). Report by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that 15.3% of the countries’ revenues were spent on different health care programs. This was the uppermost expenditure in 2008 in the world with an estimate of $7,146 health care per capita. According to Keenhan et al. (2008) the United States Human services and Health Department anticipate and forecast that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) share of the health care expenditures will continue to rise in the coming future with an estimate of 19.6% of GDP by 2017. 31 percent of the total expenditure is allocated to hospital care, 10 percent goes to pharmaceuticals, and 21 percent is allocated to the clinical services and for physicians, 4 percent to dental, 3 percent to home care, 6 percent of the expenditure is allocated to the nursing homes, 3 percent to retail products, 7 percent to administrative expenses, 7 percent to investments, 3 percent goes to the government public health doings and 6 percent to other expert services rendered by optometrists and physical therapists (Peterson & Burton, 2008), (Keehan et al., 2008). Health care system in the country is primarily in privately controlled though the state, federal city and county governments also possess several particular facilities. 70% of the total hospital capacity is composed of the non-profit hospitals. The government and the private sector also own profit making health care facilities. There are some hospitals which are managed by the federal Department of Defense to provide health care services and facilities to the military personnel. The military veterans are also provided with health care by the federal Veterans Health care Administration. The Native Americans from particular recognized tribes are also provided with health care services and facilities by the Indian Health Service (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2011). Health care expenditure data in United States is published by the bureau of the Actuary of Centers of Medicaid and even Medicare Services. According to this office, in 2007, the health care expenditure for United States was $ 2.26 trillion (Peterson & Burton, 2008). This can be interpreted as 7,439 US dollars expenditure per individual. This was reported to be an increase from the 2006 2.1 trillion US dollars with a per capita of 7,026 US dollars. The total expenditure on health care in 2006 represented a 16 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of United States. This was rather higher by 6.7 percent than the 2004 fraction of the expenditure on health care to the Gross Domestic Product. The health care expenditure is projected to continue increasing till 2017 with an average of 6.7 percent (Peterson & Burton, 2008). The change percentage may change often due to the changing needs and demands within the health care industry. In future there could be additional technological advancements that will be required in the provision of better health care services. This will ensure that the services provided are at par with the value of the money that the population of United States pays towards such services. This will in one way or another help in reducing the high infant mortality rates within the country and help in improving the life expectancy which is below and lagging behind the others for the industrialized countries (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2011) In 2009, the health care budget shot up to 2.5 trillion US dollars with a per capita of 8,047 US dollars. This was 17.3 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product with a 1.1 percentage increase from the 2008 figure. Health care expenditure in United States is increasing at a higher rate than the inflation and wage rates (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2011). Nearly half of the increase in the health care expenditure over the last few decades has been attributed to the changes in the Medical care which have been brought about by the advances in the technology. This is according to the Congressional Budget Office of the United States. The increase in consumption of prescription drugs among the adults has contributed to the high expenditure in health care since the prescription drugs take up approximately 10 percent of the total expenditure (Keehan et al., 2008). According to an analysis on international spending that was done in 2000, among all the other members of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, health care expenditure in United States is the highest and by all measures, the usage of the health care services in the country was underneath the OECD medium. The researchers also established that the costs for health care services in the country are high and that the main cause behind the rising medical expenses is the Medicare and the Medicaid programs (Peterson & Burton, 2008). According to an analysis done in 1996 of the Medical Expenditure Panel investigation established that 1 percent of the population explicates 27 percent of the total health care spending. This analysis also portrayed that 5 percent of the United State’s population accounted for nearly more than half the total spending. This means that the United States health care spending is intense. This data reflects back to all the other past years in the 1980’s and 1990’s. From a research done by Agency for Health Care study and Quality, it was established that there was pertinacity in the health care spending from one year to the other (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2011). In the 1 percent who had topped in the health care spending in 2002, 24.3 percent of them held their positions in the top 1 percent in the year 2003. In the 5 percent who had accounted for more than half of the health care spending, 34 percent of them maintained their position in 2003. Most of the young people below the age of 45 year were proportionately represented in all rankings of the health care spending. Provision of intense health care services to the Medicare beneficiaries with inveterate diseases in the last two years of living is said to increase spending, more hospital procedures and stays and more tests. There are various differences in the provision of health care services to the unremittingly sick patients according to the geographical location. Most of the observable differences that are evident are the quantity of “supply sensitive” care accessible in a region (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2011). According to the data that has been presented, the health care expenditure of United States is high compared to other developed countries. It has also been argued that the system does not fork up a tantamount value for the money that is spent on it. The residents in United States pay twice the amount of money that is used on health care in other developed countries and yet the country falls behind the other countries in terms of service delivery and such actions as life expectancy and infant mortality. United States has a high infant death rate than any other industrialized country and has a low life expectancy that is ranked 42nd in the world behind other developed and industrialized nations (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2011). The United Nations health care has been ranked as the 37th overall in performance and 72nd in the world by the overall level of health. A report done in 2004 indicated that United States is one among the industrialized countries that does not assure health care to its population. This report asserts that by the year 1990, all OECD countries had attained a universal health care coverage to all its population except United States, Turkey and Mexico (Peterson & Burton, 2008). This 2004 IOM report asserted that the unnecessary deaths of about 18, 000 people in the United States are caused by the lack of health insurance. A study done by Harvard in 2009 approximated that 44800 deaths in United States occurred because of the lack of health insurance. According to the Dr. Donald Berwick, in December 2011, he claimed that an approximate of 20 to 30 percent of the total health care spending was waste. He said that the waste was caused by the failure to harmonize treatment, overtreatment of the patients, fraud, onerous rules and the ramification of the administration of the health care system (Reinhardt, Hussey, & Petrosyan, 2008). The doctors are always remunerated from the payments that are made by the patients and the insurance plans reciprocally for the services delivered. An estimate of 84.7 percent of the United States populace is under some sort of health cover. Government health care institutions limit eligibility for health insurance which has led to nearly 45 million people under no insurance. An individual can have his or her insurance covered by the employer, parent or spouse, covered individually or by the government programs (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2011). References DeNavas-Walt, C., & Proctor, D. B. (2011). Income, Poverty and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2010. U.S. Census Bureau: Current Population Reports, 60-239. Keehan, S., Sisko, A., Truffer, C., Smith, S., Cowan, C., Poisal, J., & Clemens, M. K. (2008, February 26). Health Spending projections through 2017: The Baby-Boom Generation is coming to Medicare. Health Affairs, Peterson, C. L., & Burton, R. (2008). The U.S. Health Care Spending: Comparison With Other OECD Countries. Nova Publishers. Reinhardt, U. E., Hussey, P. S., & Petrosyan, V. (2008). "It's the prices, stupid: Why the United States Is So Different From other Countries". In Health Affairs. 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