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US Healthcare 2050 What will US healthcare look like in 2050? According to Getzen (2013), trends in better health will lead to greater need for long-term care and chronic care for the aging population while correspondingly trending toward less acute illnesses (p. 438). Personalized prognostic healthcare will lead to healthier longer lives (Lawrence, 2010). Physicians will become leaders of teams within healthcare organizations rather than the independent practitioners we are familiar with today (Getzen, 2013, p. 438). Thus, the concept of the primary care physician will become a thing of the past (Lawrence, 2010). The cost of US health care has been steadily increasing for many years causing many Americans to face difficult choices between …show more content…
It is projected that the overall US population will increase by 41 percent with the portion aged 65 or older expected to double by 2050, reaching 88.5 million senior citizens (Pallin, Espinola & Camargo, 2014). Aging populations inevitably create spending increases given that older individuals typically consume far more health care than their younger counterparts (Lawewnce, 2010). This aging population will have a greater need for long-term and chronic care as people are also projected to live longer (Getzen, 2013, p. …show more content…
Census predicts that by 2050 roughly 19 percent of the total U.S. workforce will be age 65 years or older. This segment of the labor force is expected to grow by 75 percent over the next forty years (Harrington & Heidkamp, 2013). These demographic trends predict significant employment challenges in the near future. Given that the health care workforce is already older than in many other industries, this sector is particularly vulnerable to the impact of the aging workforce. As these large numbers of older health care providers do retire, the challenge will present in efforts to replace the workforce to current levels (Harrington & Heidkamp,
On a global scale, the United States is a relatively wealthy country of advanced industrialization. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is among the costliest, spending close to 18% of gross domestic product (GDP) towards funding healthcare (2011). No universal healthcare coverage is currently available. United States healthcare is currently funded through private, federal, state, and local sources. Coverage is provided privately and through the government and military. Nearly 85% of the U.S. population is covered to some extent, leaving a population of close to 48 million without any type of health insurance. Cost is the primary reason for lack of insurance and individuals foregoing medical care and use of prescription medications.
The U.S. spending on health care is an outlier compared to other industrialized countries. On an individual basis heath care in the U.S is approximately double what other industrialized countries spend. On a total spend basis, the $3 trillion currently consumed in this sector represents the world’s fifth-largest economy. This high spending on healthcare is unsustainable in the long term. Businesses, individual consumers, and the government are consequently not insulated from the shrinking economic growth due to the ramifications of the high healthcare costs. In a global competitive market the U.S. business will lag behind other industrialized countries unless these high healthcare costs are curtailed. In addition, individuals, even those with insurance face the grim prospect of bankruptcy due to the high cost of care.
For decades, one of the many externalities that the government is trying to solve is the rising costs of healthcare. "Rising healthcare costs have hurt American competitiveness, forced too many families into bankruptcy to get their families the care they need, and driven up our nation's long-term deficit" ("Deficit-Reducing Healthcare Reform," 2014). The United States national government plays a major role in organizing, overseeing, financing, and more so than ever delivering health care (Jaffe, 2009). Though the government does not provide healthcare directly, it serves as a financing agent for publicly funded healthcare programs through the taxation of citizens. The total share of the national publicly funded health spending by various governments amounts to 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, GDP (Jaffe, 2009). By 2019, government spending on Medicare and Medicaid is expected to rise to 6 percent and 12 percent by 2050 (Jaffe, 2009). The percentages, documented from the Health Policy Brief (2009) by Jaffe, are from Medicare and Medicaid alone. The rapid rates are not due to increase of enrollment but growth in per capita costs for providing healthcare, especially via Medicare.
Miller, H. D. (2009). From volume to value: better ways to pay for health care. Health Affairs
For the last five years of my life I have worked in the healthcare industry. One of the biggest issues plaguing our nation today has been the ever rising cost of health care. If we don't get costs under control, we risk losing the entire system, as well as potentially crippling our economy. For the sake of our future, we must find a way to lower the cost of health care in this nation.
An issue that is widely discussed and debated concerning the United States’ economy is our health care system. The health care system in the United States is not public, meaning that the states does not offer free or affordable health care service. In Canada, France and Great Britain, for example, the government funds health care through taxes. The United States, on the other hand, opted for another direction and passed the burden of health care spending on individual consumers as well as employers and insurers. In July 2006, the issue was transparency: should the American people know the price of the health care service they use and the results doctors and hospitals achieve? The Wall Street Journal article revealed that “U.S. hospitals, most of them nonprofit, charged un-insured patients prices that vastly exceeded those they charged their insured patients. Driving their un-insured patients into bankruptcy." (p. B1) The most expensive health care system in the world is that of America. I will talk about the health insurance in U.S., the health care in other countries, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and my solution to this problem.
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.
It is no secret that the current healthcare reform is a contentious matter that promises to transform the way Americans view an already complex healthcare system. The newly insured population is expected to increase by an estimated 32 million while facing an expected shortage of up to 44,000 primary care physicians within the next 12 years (Doherty, 2010). Amidst these already overwhelming challenges, healthcare systems are becoming increasingly scrutinized to identify ways to improve cost containment and patient access (Curits & Netten, 2007). “Growing awareness of the importance of health promotion and disease prevention, the increased complexity of community-based care, and the need to use scarce human healthcare resources, especially family physicians, far more efficiently and effectively, have resulted in increased emphasis on primary healthcare renewal.” (Bailey, Jones & Way, 2006, p. 381).
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
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.
With the United Nations listing health care as natural born right and the escalating cost of health care America has reached a debatable crisis. Even if you do have insurance it's a finical strain on most families.
...nted if the healthcare system as a whole reforms to a patient and physician friendly system.
The Keynesian concept of supply and demand clearly captures the population trends in health care and foreshadows the diminishing sustainability of the current financing structure. Substantial demand for health care services will not be waning anytime in the foreseeable future. The jump from 4.4 million Americans over the age of 85 in 2000 to 6.3 million predicted in 2025 comprises a significant increase in demand for health care (Williams & Torrens, 2008). Accordingly, total health care expenditures grew from 1.2 trillion dollars in 2000 to 2.7 trillion dollars in 2015 (National Center for Health Statistics, 2017).