Health Care Spending Paper

Health Care Spending Paper

Betsy Boone

July 25, 2014

HCS/440 Economics: The Financing of Health Care

Professor: John Branner

Health care in the United States has seen a drastic growth over the last few decades, and with that the health care spending in the Unites States has continue to grow where it has extended to other countries and even then there are millions of Americans without care. There has been multiple attempts to control this situation, yet they have all resulted in failures, Today we are seen that a more comprehensive approach to the situation has taken place in order to control this issue which at times felt that is was spiraling out of control. With the Affordable Care Act more and more people are able to purchase coverage at a cost to meet their needs. Although at times it feels that the issue with health care spending is out of control and on the rise, there is a projected technique and approach to the situation , despite the fact that this means that there is some cuts to departments that need to be made, a change can be done to ensure that the health care expenditure gets some control once more.

The United States federal government announce on July 21, 2014 that there has been a slight increase on health care share of GDP since 1997.  In the past few years the total spending per person was worked out to the amount of $ 8,915 per person (Mangan, 2014). There are many aspects that have an effect on this variables, such as using prescription medication versus experimental medication which helps keep the cost down, another timeline effect to the percentage of healthcare expenditures of the GDP is long term care facilities , as well as continuing care retirement communities. Over all the health- care cost has been increasing slowly in the recent yeas in comparison to 2007-2009 recession (Philips, 2014).Although it has been reported that there will be an increase in the expenditure in health care since the new open enrollment for insurance under the affordable care act has taken place some of this changes will not be seen until the policies take effect, and insures start spending money using their coverage. According to a federal audit it is predicted for the health care spending to continue to grow slowly as the economy recovers, it is projected that for the period pf 2014-2022, national health spending is projected to ricochet and grow to rates seen prior to the recession years, although it is expected to grow over time this can be a growth over a long term period (Young, 2013).

In the United States it’d been said that we spend a lot of money in all things rather than health care, on the average a person that has health care coverage spends anywhere from $328.00 - $500.00 for health care coverage, but is this enough or is it not enough? With insurance carriers trying to maintain cost down and people not having coverage we can make an assumption that not enough is been spend in health care . In orders for us to be able to see a rise in the margins in health care we need to ensure that money is been spend in healthcare, meaning more people buying coverage , as well as using it the coverage . Insurance carrier covering services that are necessary to patient’s quality of life, rather than basing the patient’s case in the amount of money they have to pay to ensure the live expectancy of the patient. In order for health care spending to have a boost many things have to changes according the Federal Spending Plan the United States should cut from several programs to be able to turn the economy around some of those departments are: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education and so many others. With that been said, we have clime in to such debt that the departments threaten to be cut are departments that can have a long term effect in the way our country will shape to in the next decades to come. Although, by doing this cut we are projected by 2024to be at 17.6 percent of GDP, which was the level the last time the budget was balance during the last year of President Bill Clinton was in office (Edwards, 2014).