If Healthcare Really Cared
Clayton Teem
Issue date: 10/9/07 Section: Opinion
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Clayton Teem
Contibuting Writer
Health and Environment (ENST 3070) is a new course coming to the environmental studies tract of GSC's B.S. degree in Applied Environmental Spatial Analysis. The course looks into a variety of health related areas, including an understanding of healthcare systems: analyzing needs, resources, and utilization patterns within an organizational or geographic framework at the local, regional, national, or international level.
Analyzing U.S. healthcare reveals a system emphasizing high technology, abundant use of medications, and a large percentage of specialists/sub-specialists vs. primary care physicians. Financing is 50% private insurance (mainly employer-based) and 50% government (e.g. Medicare/Medicaid). It is an expensive system at a yearly cost of approximately $6,000 per person. Though spending 2 trillion dollars on healthcare in 2006 (three times the defense budget), 45 million Americans are uninsured (most employed and increasingly middle-class), another 16 million are underinsured; nearly half of 2006 individual bankruptcies were due to medical debt. Overall, the U.S. system is rated mediocre in comparison to the healthcare of other nations.
The U.S. spends 20% of every healthcare dollar on administrative costs vs. 5% for other nations. Medication are expensive, owing to a lack of bulk purchasing by many sources (e.g. Medicare), although a few entities (e.g. the VA) negotiate discounts. The system relies on a market-based process for medication production, which inflates costs substantially (marketing/advertising are twice research dollars). Furthermore, healthcare is unevenly distributed, and fails to sufficiently monitor the efficiency/effectiveness of care delivered.
It is estimated that administrative cost savings alone would pay the premiums for all uninsured and underinsured people. There are currently about 6,000 payers (using some 1,100 forms) for 850,000 providers. A hospital may have 50 pricings for a single procedure. One study showed the average U.S. physician needed two full-time front office workers to handle insurance claims; in Canada, it took an office manager for a comparatively sized practice only four hours to submit payment information.
Contibuting Writer
Health and Environment (ENST 3070) is a new course coming to the environmental studies tract of GSC's B.S. degree in Applied Environmental Spatial Analysis. The course looks into a variety of health related areas, including an understanding of healthcare systems: analyzing needs, resources, and utilization patterns within an organizational or geographic framework at the local, regional, national, or international level.
Analyzing U.S. healthcare reveals a system emphasizing high technology, abundant use of medications, and a large percentage of specialists/sub-specialists vs. primary care physicians. Financing is 50% private insurance (mainly employer-based) and 50% government (e.g. Medicare/Medicaid). It is an expensive system at a yearly cost of approximately $6,000 per person. Though spending 2 trillion dollars on healthcare in 2006 (three times the defense budget), 45 million Americans are uninsured (most employed and increasingly middle-class), another 16 million are underinsured; nearly half of 2006 individual bankruptcies were due to medical debt. Overall, the U.S. system is rated mediocre in comparison to the healthcare of other nations.
The U.S. spends 20% of every healthcare dollar on administrative costs vs. 5% for other nations. Medication are expensive, owing to a lack of bulk purchasing by many sources (e.g. Medicare), although a few entities (e.g. the VA) negotiate discounts. The system relies on a market-based process for medication production, which inflates costs substantially (marketing/advertising are twice research dollars). Furthermore, healthcare is unevenly distributed, and fails to sufficiently monitor the efficiency/effectiveness of care delivered.
It is estimated that administrative cost savings alone would pay the premiums for all uninsured and underinsured people. There are currently about 6,000 payers (using some 1,100 forms) for 850,000 providers. A hospital may have 50 pricings for a single procedure. One study showed the average U.S. physician needed two full-time front office workers to handle insurance claims; in Canada, it took an office manager for a comparatively sized practice only four hours to submit payment information.
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