Health Care Priorities Essay

Health Care Priorities Inadequate access, rising costs, and questionable quality in regards to health care are worries that not only effect the American public, but policy makers, employers and insurers alike (Sultz & Young, 2014). Rapidly approaching 20% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), America spends more than any other country on health care. The American public and policy makers know that it appears to be a problem spiraling out of control, yet no one seems to know quite what to do about it. In recent years the American public has been slightly reluctant to get on board with any radical change or reform because, albeit that their out of pocket costs had increased, the system still worked relatively well for the majority of Americans.

spending have not led to improved health outcomes. Therefore, it is possible that policy makers have been on the wrong path all along. Porter and Lee (2013) argue that to date defining the goal has been the problem. They state that “improving value to the patients” should be the true goal. Improving value requires either improving one or more outcomes without raising costs or lowering costs without compromising outcomes, or both. Failure to improve value means failure to the entire system. A recent report from the National Research Council looked at international measures of health quality. The study found that although the United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, it is far from the healthiest. In fact, the average lifespan of Americans is below that of 17 other industrialized countries and has been growing worse by comparison. Obesity and diabetes remains a large part of the imbalance. While some lifespan measures can be attributed to the lack of access to health coverage and medical care for some populations, research suggests that even wealthier Americans are in poorer health than their peers in other countries. Surgical and medical errors also appear high in the U.S., as do mistakes involving medications and patients receiving incorrect test

Although it is still a bit too premature to see if that will indeed hold true, the ACA has not necessarily had a good start in that regard. An 18 month old study in Oregon was conducted among a group of low-income residents that won Medicaid coverage (a large part of those to be insured by the ACA) as part of a state conducted experiment. The newly insured contributed to a 40 percent increase in ER visits (Nicks, 2014). President Barack Obama and proponents of the ACA have hoped that if citizens had insurance that it would reduce the volume of ER visits, particularly for situations that could be easily handled by the patients primary care physician. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come. It goes without saying this is not what the ACA was designed to