According to the Hastings Center, health care costs are increasing at an annual

Question

According to the Hastings Center, health care costs are increasing at an annual rate of 7% a year. If this continues, Medicare will be bankrupt in nine years and the national health care burden will increase to $4 trillion in 10 years. The escalation of health care costs is largely due to medical technology. Businesses are finding it harder to provide health coverage as an employee benefit. Ten years ago, 70 % of employers provided health care. Today that percentage is at 61%. There are three system-wide efforts, based on the way our current system operates, that can bring down cots. One of them is to raise taxes to pay for programs such as Medicare. Another is to cut benefits, which equals less care. The third is to force people to pay more out of pocket.

For this assignment, as a health services administrator, you have been asked to serve as an advisor as part of a health care reform initiative. The advisory group must bring forward a proposed solution for the above scenario. Which of the above solutions will you support? Frame the issue. Propose your solution. Explain why you selected this option. Support with data and research.

Explanation / Answer

Costs can be reduced by eliminating waste and inefficiency. Medical care should be improvised in the technology front, which eliminates the labour force and increases efficiency. It is estimated that 40-50% of cost increased are due to new technologies or intense usage of old ones. That makes the control of technology the most important factor in bringing costs down.

As said, prevention is better than cure. There should be increased efforts in disease prevention.

Government should keep a check on the use of technology, negotiating physician fees, hospital budgets with limits on expenditure, adopting stringent policies. This would result in keeping the annual cost increase in check and have better outcomes, and achieve the overall goal at significantly less cost.

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