The U.S. Health Care System

Today's topic focuses on issues with the U.S. Health Care System. For this particular topic, the article studied was "Health Spending Projections Through 2019: The Recession's Impact Continues" by Christopher J. Truffer, et. al. This article describes the National Health Expenditures (NHE) from 2007 to 2019. The projected estimates are based on the current spendings that are occurring now and the ones that have occurred in previous years. The three main sources of health care that are discussed in this article are Medicaid, Medicare, and Private health insurance. Medicare was established in 1965 for the elderly and disabled citizens. There are three parts to Medicare, which are part a. Hospital Impatient (which is the pay as you go plan) part b. Physician Outpatient (financed by general revenue) and part d. Prescription Drugs (added in 2006 administered through private drug plans and also financed by general revenue, payments from the state and beneficiary premiums). Medicaid was also established in 1965 and covers certain low-income groups of people. People that are eligible for Medicaid are children and parents, the disabled and the elderly. Medicaid is administered by the states and financed by federal/state FMAP. This particular form of health care is also referred to as SCHIP, State Children's Health Insurance Program. Medicaid is also based on a family or a household's federal poverty level (FPL). FPL is based on a fixed income for a certain amount of people in a household. For example, a family of three may receive Medicaid if their income is $2o,ooo a year (this is not a exact source, I just used random numbers). Private health insurance is when people either buy directly from the insurance company, receive it because they are an employer of a company that offers special plans, or they join cooperative and purchase insurance as a group. Based on the 2007 personal health care expenditures, Medicaid was 9%, Medicare was 22% and Private health insurance was 36%. Based on this article these from if health care are expected to decelerate by the year 2019 based on better financial expenditures in which the U.S. is expected to have in upcoming years.
Implications of continued increases in health care spending and continued proportional increases in public spending are medical prices and utilization. Medical prices as stated in the article are "influenced by economywide factors and 'relative medical price inflation,' which is the difference between medical and economywide price inflation." The growth of medical prices is steadily increasing. Utilization "which includes both the volume and the intensity (or complexity) of services" also accelerating. Though Medicare and Medicaid are both expected to decelerate by 2019, private insurance spending is expected to increase. Due to the changes in health care premiums and people who have high-costing claims, private insurance will constantly increase.
Based on the readings, class lectures, and common knowledge, I think the most pressing issues for healthcare reform are the issues that relate to spending. I think that there is so much money spent on healthcare and I personally feel as though the government needs to come up with a better budgeting plan. If I could change one thing about our healthcare system it would be the distribution of healthcare to all Americans. I think it is very important that U.S. citizens all have healthcare. I would change the FPL so that it would help families with a certain income. I don't know as of now how I would change these things, but I would come up with a way for healthcare to be distributed to all U.S. citizens no matter if they're sick, jobless, homeless, etc.

Until next time, Stay healthy!
Kiara