The Cost of Living Imagine being the single parent of two children avoiding going to the doctor, despite your constant cough and horrendous headache, because of the fear of going into life ruining debt. This is a problem many people in the United States face as spending on healthcare increased to $3.2 trillion in 2015 which is about $9,980 per individual, (Vital Signs: Rise in National Health Expenditures Slows) which is considerably high in comparison to the United Kingdom’s $148.34 billion or $2,292 per person (Department of Health 's Settlement at the Spending Review 2015). The United States spends comparably more than most other first world countries when it comes to healthcare and this is a problem for its citizens who have come into
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The number of people that visited the emergency room in 2015 number at 136.3 million (Emergency Department Visits). The problem lies in the fact that its estimated that about one-third to one-half of these visits did not to be treated at an emergency room, but could instead have been dealt with at an urgent care center which has cheaper prices and would have saved $18 billion across the country (Emergency Room vs. Urgent Care: Differences, Costs &Amp; Options). For the most part, Americans are unaware of the service that urgent care centers provide as a way to get effective care, quickly and cheaply. This cost can easily be reduced by providing awareness of urgent care centers as a viable option and explain PLS or the prudent layperson standard, a method of determine what healthcare route is best (Emergency Room vs. Urgent Care: Differences, Costs &Amp; Options). However, emergency rooms are not the only misuse of healthcare services in the U.S., and it’s not just patients that are making mistakes within healthcare. Doctors are overusing testing and people are going to the doctor. A campaign called choosing wisely was started arguing that $900 billion is wasted on unnecessary testing so as part of the campaign specialty medical organization made lists of testing that isn’t really useful in determining illness (Doctor Groups List Top Overused, Misused Tests, Treatments, and Procedures - …show more content…
In an interview, PBS talks to David Cutler, who states that administrative costs are one of the main reasons for the high healthcare cost giving an example of Duke University Hospital having 1,300 billing clerks while a typical Canadian hospital only has a handful of clerks. The issue here is that many of the clerks employed in the U.S. could easily be done without. Other countries with lower costs have more automated file management systems, and since they are single payer systems in most cases getting payment is simple. This is not the case in the United States where most patient files are hard copies and there are so many different health care providers that can provide payment to a hospital. Thus, the United States needs many more clerks to handle the filing and payment options. The administrative cost will continue to take its toll on healthcare costs unless the two problems are resolved. The filing issue can easily be resolved by moving over to automated or digitalized filing systems and creating a national database of patients and conditions. The other problem is not so easily solved since what seems to be the best solution is nationalizing healthcare to provide the single payer system. However, people do not want their tax money to go towards paying for other people’s care. This
The number of people that visited the emergency room in 2015 number at 136.3 million (Emergency Department Visits). The problem lies in the fact that its estimated that about one-third to one-half of these visits did not to be treated at an emergency room, but could instead have been dealt with at an urgent care center which has cheaper prices and would have saved $18 billion across the country (Emergency Room vs. Urgent Care: Differences, Costs &Amp; Options). For the most part, Americans are unaware of the service that urgent care centers provide as a way to get effective care, quickly and cheaply. This cost can easily be reduced by providing awareness of urgent care centers as a viable option and explain PLS or the prudent layperson standard, a method of determine what healthcare route is best (Emergency Room vs. Urgent Care: Differences, Costs &Amp; Options). However, emergency rooms are not the only misuse of healthcare services in the U.S., and it’s not just patients that are making mistakes within healthcare. Doctors are overusing testing and people are going to the doctor. A campaign called choosing wisely was started arguing that $900 billion is wasted on unnecessary testing so as part of the campaign specialty medical organization made lists of testing that isn’t really useful in determining illness (Doctor Groups List Top Overused, Misused Tests, Treatments, and Procedures - …show more content…
In an interview, PBS talks to David Cutler, who states that administrative costs are one of the main reasons for the high healthcare cost giving an example of Duke University Hospital having 1,300 billing clerks while a typical Canadian hospital only has a handful of clerks. The issue here is that many of the clerks employed in the U.S. could easily be done without. Other countries with lower costs have more automated file management systems, and since they are single payer systems in most cases getting payment is simple. This is not the case in the United States where most patient files are hard copies and there are so many different health care providers that can provide payment to a hospital. Thus, the United States needs many more clerks to handle the filing and payment options. The administrative cost will continue to take its toll on healthcare costs unless the two problems are resolved. The filing issue can easily be resolved by moving over to automated or digitalized filing systems and creating a national database of patients and conditions. The other problem is not so easily solved since what seems to be the best solution is nationalizing healthcare to provide the single payer system. However, people do not want their tax money to go towards paying for other people’s care. This