At first glance it may be tempting to simply blame the government, their seniors--their problem. However is it really all the fault of the government? Per capita americans spend around $7,300 a year versus the United Kingdom which spends around $3,000 dollars per year per person. The UK is not a third world country, so we cannot blame low costs simply on quality, so could corporate greed be causing our insurance and our health care costs to rise? The government does not run hospitals just helps guarantee that people who qualify for medicare get some aid, can they be the only ones to blame.
Although I do think that seniors should receive the help from the government, my point is it is too simple to blame this problem completely on the incompetence of bureaucracy when it is not so simple. Thoughts about how the government could help? Could/should something be done about the corporate greed that is costing millions of americans thousands of dollars?
insurance costs
2 comments:
The rising cost of medical care surely isn't all about the government's fault. It's also not specific to the care of the elderly through Medicare Programs. The problem in my opinion is the run away corporate greed where the the cost of medicines for example continue to increase as corporations put profits ahead of actual affordability of care. However, the most expensive component of health care is the labor, this means the doctors we have to see (http://health.usnews.com/health-news/hospital-of-tomorrow/articles/2014/10/06/op-ed-most-expensive-cost-in-health-care-the-doctor). The government can help streamline the process of Medicare claims to alleviate the need for doctors to hire extra staff for paper work. This reduces the cost of administration and allow doctors to focus more on patients, even hire more doctors and nurses instead. More emphasis of preventive care should also be put on patients. Insurance companies today already begin rolling out programs that incentivize members to keep healthy habits by promoting exercises, healthy food choices. The government can do the same with Medicare programs.
As much as I would like to believe that the most costly part is labor I am not sure I can agree. If you have been to the new Mills Peninsula Hospital you probably saw a large rock, said rock cost over a million dollars, it has no purpose that could not be fulfilled with a rock of a fraction of the cost. Furthermore the CEO of that hospital makes in one day, the same amount of money that a middle class employe at his hospital would make in about 20 years. As this is only the CEO of one hospital we can imagine that the cost goes up as the chains of hospital CEO's go up. Doctors, surgeons, nurses, we expect them to get paid-- even pretty well for their job in healing us. CEO's? They are not directly interested in their patients. To them patients are money. If all the money that health care costs were going up were going to people who deserve it costs would not be rising as much.
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