The U.S.

Health Care: Anarchy And Apathy

What follows are believed to be facts that are believed to exist regarding the
present U.S. Health Care System. This may be why about 80 percent of U.S. citizens
understandably want our health care system overhauled desperately due to the
inadequate health care they receive and access:

The U.S. is ranked rather low related to life expectancy and infant mortality.

However, the U.S. is ranked number one in the world for spending the most for
health care- as well as being number one for those with chronic diseases.

About 125 million people have such diseases. This is about 70 percent of the
Medicare budget that is spent treating these terrible illnesses.

Health Care costs are now well over 2 trillion dollars of our gross domestic product.
This is three times the amount nearly 20 years ago- and 8 times the amount it was
about 30 years ago.

Most is spent with medical institutions, as far as health expenditures are concerned.

About a third of that amount is nothing more than administrative toxic waste that
does not involve the restoration of the health of others. This illustrates how absurd
the U.S. Health Care System is presently.

Nearly 7000 dollars is spent on every citizen for health care every year, and that,
too, is more than anyone else in the world.

We have around 50 million citizens without any health insurance, which may cause
about 20 thousand deaths per year.
This includes millions of children without health care, which is added to the planned
or implemented cuts in the government SCHIP program for children, which alone
covers about 7 million kids.

Our children.

Nearly half of the states in the U.S. are planning on or have made cuts to Medicaid,
which covers about 60 million people, and those on Medicaid are in need of this
coverage is largely due to unemployment.

With these Medicaid cuts, over a million people will lose their health care coverage
and benefits to a damaging degree.

About 70 percent of citizens have some form of health insurance, and the premiums
for their insurance have increased nearly 90 percent in the past 8 years.

About 45 percent of health care is provided by our government- which is predicted

to experience a severe financial crisis in the near future with some government
health care programs, it has been reported.

About half of all patients do not receive proper treatment to restore their health, it
has been stated. Medical errors desperately need to be reduced as well.

Most doctors want a single payer health care system, which would save about 400
billion dollars a year- about 20 percent less than what we are paying now.

The American College of Physicians, second in size only to the American Medical
Association, supports a single payer health care system.

The AMA, historically opposed to a single payer health care system, has close to half
of its members in favor of this system.

Less than a third of all physicians are members of the AMA, according to others.
Our health care we offer citizens is the present system is sort of a hybrid of a
national and private health care system that has obviously mutated to a degree that
is incapable of being fully functional due to perhaps copious amounts and levels of
individual and legal entities.

Health Care must be the priority immediately by the new administration and
congress.

Challenges include the 700 billion dollars that have been pledged with the financial
bailout that will occur, since the proposed health care plan of the next
administration is projected to cost over a trillion dollars within the first year or so of
the proposed plan to recalibrate health care for all of us in the U.S.

Likely, hundreds of billions of dollars that are speculated to be saved with a reform
of the country’s health care system.

Health policy analysts should not be greatly concerned on the health care corporate
shareholders who may be affected by this reform of our health care system that is
desperately needed.

It is estimated that the U.S. needs presently tens of thousands more primary care
physicians to fully satisfy the necessities of those members of the public health.

This specialty makes possibly less than 100 thousand dollars annually in income,
compared with other physician specialties, yet they are and have been the
backbone of the U.S. health care system.

The American College of Physicians believes that a patient centered national health
care workforce policy is needed to address these issues that would ideally
restructure the payment policies that exist presently with primary care physicians.

Further vexing is that it is quite apparent that we have some greedy health care
corporations that take advantage of our health care system.
Over a billion dollars was recovered for Medicare and Medicaid fraud last year
through settlements paid to the department of Justice because some organizations
who deliberately ripped off taxpayers.

These are the taxpayers in the U.S. who have a fragmented health care system with
substantial components and different levels of government- composed of several
legal entities and individuals, which has resulted in medical anarchy, so it seems.

Thanks to various corporations infecting our Health Care System in the United
States, the following variables sum up this system as it exists today.

Perhaps the United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676) is the best
solution to meet our health care needs as citizens, it appears.

We would finally have, as with most other countries, a Universal Health Care system
that will allow free choice of doctors and hospitals, potentially, and health care for
all completely.

It should and likely will be funded by a combination of payroll taxes and general tax
revenue which is realistically possible.

Because the following seems to be in need of repair regarding the U.S. Health Care
System:

Access- citizens do not have the right or ability to make use of this system as we
should.

Efficiency- this system strives on creating much waste and expense as it possibly
can.

Quality- the standard of excellence we deserve as citizens with our health care is
missing in action.
Sustainability- We as citizens cannot continue to keep our health care system in as
it is designed at this time- as it exists today.

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/US_healthcare/index.asp

Dan Abshear