The Bitter Pill by Brill Steven addresses the problem attached to medical bills in small towns across the country. Brill feels that American health care is eating away our economy and our treasure and discusses the costs associated with the provision of health care services in the U.S. The article explores the medical world through the medical experience encountered by a 50-year-old Scott S. and his wife Rebecca S. from the surrounding suburb near Dallas Texas. How is it possible that a laboratory work for a breathing problem cost $132,303? It is incredible how a couple who seemed to have a comfortable semiretirement near Dallas, Texas though they were ready to live life calmly as possible. Rebecca and her Husband Scott both worked part time. During the evening of March 4, Scott started having trouble breathing; Rebecca rushed him to the closest emergency room at the …show more content…
I believe that routine testing in hospitals are the first to contribute to the high medical cost because I personally think that they do the test that is not necessary for the matter. In Scott’s case, I think that all the blood work that was done and all the urinary testing they did was unnecessary leading to a high medical bill. Medical devices are necessary to some extent I think, let 's say that Scott also broke a leg, and he had to use a wheelchair, and also a cane. His bill would have been a lot higher. The question that Brills as is why would the government want spends so much money on canes and wheelchairs knowing that buying it from Wal-Mart would be a lot cheaper and would save not only the insurance companies but also people so much money. Salaries, well we have to pay our caregivers but we don’t need five or six doctors in the emergency room checking up on us. I think one is enough and also nurses, we have to pay all of them, and it can cost us more money then our actual
Perhaps the greatest problem faced throughout this tale was that of miscommunication. The Merced Community Medical Center or MCMC for short was the place where Lia was being treated. This hospital was the Merced county's only hospital and unlike most rural county hospital it is state of the art, ."..42,000-square foot wing ... that houses coronary care, intensive care, and transitional care units; 154 medical and surgical beds...."3 This was a teaching hospital made up of interns mostly, but also with some great doctors like Peggy Philp and Neil Ernst. Peggy and Neil are married and have children. They graduated together at the top of their class, and have created quite a practice for themselves. Although MCMC is a great rural hospital, it also has the same problems as most rural hospitals do which is the health care crunch, where most of the money goes to the urban hospitals and then the leftover money is spread among th...
.... “The Strange Case of Marlise Munoz and John Peter Smith Hospital.” n.p.. 28 Jan. 2014. Web. 08 Feb. 2014.
- Mrs. Dawson wants the healthcare team to do everything they possibly can to save her husband and live at home with him. The health care providers are divided; some of the members believe that he will recover and some believe additional treatment is prolonging the inevitable and perhaps causing Mr. Dawson more suffering.
The amount of money that is spent on healthcare is a quite a bit of money but about 10% of all the money is a result of some sort of medical fraud or abuse. This is about 120 billion dollars. With HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) medical fraud and abuse can be tracked easier. HIPAA was enacted in august of 1996; this was to help improve the portability and continuity of the health insurance.
Hicks, L. (2012). The Economics of Health and Medical Care (6th Ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Niles, N. J. (2014). Basics of the U.S. health care system (2nd ed.). Retrieved July 14, 2016, from http://samples.jbpub.com/9781284043761/Chapter1.pdf
In order to make ones’ health care coverage more affordable, the nation needs to address the continually increasing medical care costs. Approximately more than one-sixth of the United States economy is devoted to health care spending, such as: soaring prices for medical services, costly prescription drugs, newly advanced medical technology, and even unhealthy lifestyles. Our system is spending approximately $2.7 trillion annually on health care. According to experts, it is estimated that approximately 20%-30% of that spending (approx. $800 billion a year) appears to go towards wasteful, redundant, or even inefficient care.
Despite the established health care facilities in the United States, most citizens do not have access to proper medical care. We must appreciate from the very onset that a healthy and strong nation must have a proper health care system. Such a health system should be available and affordable to all. The cost of health services is high. In fact, the ...
The U.S. expends far more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet we get fewer benefits, less than ideal health outcomes, and a lot of dissatisfaction manifested by unequal access, the significant numbers of uninsured and underinsured Americans, uneven quality, and unconstrained wastes. The financing of healthcare is also complicated, as there is no single payer system and payment schemes vary across payors and providers.
Niles, N. J. (2011). Basics of the U.S. health care system. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
According to Harry A. Sultz and Kristina M. Young, the authors of our textbook Health Care USA, medical care in the United States is a $2.5 Trillion industry (xvii). This industry is so large that “the U.S. health care system is the world’s eighth
In the documentary, Money and Medicine (2012), we learned that America is facing a health care crisis because over-diagnosis and over treatments (PBS 2012). This turns
Rising medical costs are a worldwide problem, but nowhere are they higher than in the U.S. Although Americans with good health insurance coverage may get the best medical treatment in the world, the health of the average American, as measured by life expectancy and infant mortality, is below the average of other major industrial countries. Inefficiency, fraud and the expense of malpractice suits are often blamed for high U.S. costs, but the major reason is overinvestment in technology and personnel.
Through the next couple of days our family went through some of the coping stages. We experienced anger because we did not know the severity of the damage, we were depressed and then we had to come to accept God’s will. Ann was a devout Christian and we found comfort of knowing where she was going to.
The cost of US health care has been steadily increasing for many years causing many Americans to face difficult choices between health care and other priorities in their lives. Health economists are bringing to light the tradeoffs which must be considered in every healthcare decision (Getzen, 2013, p. 427). Therefore, efforts must be made to incite change which constrains the cost of health care without creating adverse health consequences. As the medical field becomes more business oriented, there will be more of a shift in focus toward the costs and benefits, which will make medicine more like the rest of the economy (Getzen, 2013, p. 439).