Medical Reforms: Are they working?

What country has the best care in the world? Answer: Not the United States, of course. It’s just a starting point, but now that the reform of health care is back on the political agenda, it is worth noting. Some of us were talking that obesity is not the fault of high cost of our health care but everyone wanted to know what makes our system of health care so expensive. Everyone wants to know where the money goes. I wonder if someone talks about health care reforms today. If, instead of bickering and discussions, it may be interesting to have a critical look at the factors that lead to more expensive care for all.

America has the best healthcare system in the world, said Bob Dole and other perpetrators of health care reform. Once upon a time, this was true. Now, what America has is the most expensive health system in the world. Healthcare costs in the United States are higher than any other part of the world, and we are NOT healthy than most of our peer nations. Medical treatment is very expensive in the U.S. It’s too expensive for most people, if you do not have adequate health insurance. Most hospitals in the United States are privately owned. There may be small government owned hospitals in some parts of the country. Medicare and Medicaid fraud in hospitals, doctors and drug companies cost the taxpayer $ 100 – $ 130 billion a year.

In Florida, 40 percent of the doctors themselves have their own testing facilities. Patients of the doctors-owned laboratories undergo almost twice the number of tests compared to the doctors who don’t own a laboratory – Weird statistics, but true. Doctors who have MRI equipment order four times more magnetic resonance imaging scans than physicians who do not. One third (33%) of respondents in the U.S. said test results or documents were not available at time of appointment. These delays and duplications are a clear sign of inefficient care, and waste of time for both physicians and patients and resources.

Let us start with an American Medical Association hoping no one will notice that American doctors make more money than doctors elsewhere – roughly twice as much. The average income ranges between $ 274,000 to $ 173,000 for specialists and general practitioners respectively at 6.6 and 4.2 times higher than the average patient. “The area where the U.S. health care system performs best is preventive care, an area that has been monitored closely for over a decade by managed care plans. “We’re twice as expensive as most other industrialized countries,” said Gerard Anderson, professor of health policy and management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

According to a study not only do Americans pay much more for medical treatment than anyone else in the world, but also bear the burden of medical errors. Health care reform legislation passed by Congress largely focused on reducing the number of uninsured – estimated to reduce these numbers, by about 60 percent, but it is not clear how these reforms will affect the U.S. economy. Medical expenses are growing faster than the cost of other services. They are climbing at rates that exceed not only inflation and the depreciation of the dollar, but also the federal government itself. In fact, they spend an increasing share of personal income and national income. Why? Many people are involved in providing or receiving care has some pretty good ideas on what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality.