Healthcare Cost in US

Who Should Pay for the Rising Cost of Healthcare in the US?

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Healthcare cost

The rising cost of healthcare in the United States is projected to increase annually by 20% for the next few years. A major contributor to the rising cost of healthcare is the establishment of new cancer drugs that are expensive, but effective in treating the ailment. It is important to acknowledge that cancer is prevalent across the social ranks in the American society. Therefore, it would be ignorant not to allow access of new cancer drugs to the poor people. Therefore, government initiatives through Medicare should play a critical role in subsidizing the cost of the new cancer drugs. Currently, people with medical insurance are accessing the new cancer drugs at a high cost. On the other hand, private healthcare insurers are discriminating against covering unemployed individuals.

Medicare

Medicare agrees to reimburse doctors on merits of drugs performance. It is important for Medicare to evaluate doctors’ role in drug pricing. This means a combined taskforce of members from drug manufacturers, doctors and Medicare officials should be included in determining the price and value of the new cancer drugs. In the mean time, generic cancer drugs should be made accessible to cancer patients who cannot afford new cancer drugs. This will create a combined force between Medicare and private healthcare insurers in covering for cancer related expenditures.

Medicaid

Medicaid role in preventing fraud in cancer drugs pricing should be initialized following the emergence of the new and expensive cancer drugs. A survey on health care spending in the year 2005 revealed that pharmacists and doctors are susceptible to inflating the cost of healthcare (Catlin, Cowan, Heffler & Washington, 2007). The aspect of corruption in healthcare is not alien in the United States. However, cost control initiatives can be used to ensure that healthcare budgeting within states is monitored closely.

Healthcare reforms

Reform on healthcare policies that focus on diseases like cancer can be crucial in ensuring that every person benefits from new and effective drugs. This means that the government through Medicare and Medicaid can reduce its expenditure on some hospital services. There are healthcare services that can be supplemented by home care services. The improvising of home nursing and home care services can be critical in ensuring that a priority is shifted to cancer treatment.

A need to have a consumer-directed approach in offering cancer treatment to patients is necessary. In this regard, the government through Medicaid should establish a standardized national format that ensures hospitals charge-masters are not overrated (Reinhardt, 2006). Therefore, cancer patients not covered by Medicare cannot be discriminated from exorbitant cancer drug costs. Moreover, the new standard national format on charge-masters should recommend all hospitals make their charge-masters public. This will educate patients about healthcare policies and cost of healthcare.

Government role

The government role in ensuring that access to new drugs is not conducted with discrimination is imminent. In this respect, the government engagement with the non-profit community hospitals is critical in reducing hospital expenditures (Shi & Singh, 2004). Non-profit community hospitals and their medical staff may not require reimbursement for services rendered (Shi & Singh, 2004). This reduces healthcare cost, as well as increase the access of new cancer drugs to non insured cancer patients. Non-profit community hospitals are critical in offering discounts for health conditions like cancer. Nonetheless, the current pricing of cancer drugs is unreasonable and must be addressed immediately. In fact, some oncologists are already expressing their discomfort with American doctors’ decisions to increase the cost of cancer drugs (Berenson, 2005).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Berenson, A. (2005). Cancer drugs offer hope, but at huge expense. The New York Times, A1-C3.

Catlin, A., Cowan, C., Heffler, S., & Washington, B. (2007). National health spending in 2005: the slowdown continues. Health Affairs, 26(1), 142-153.

Reinhardt, U. E. (2006). The pricing of US hospital services: chaos behind a veil of secrecy. Health Affairs, 25(1), 57-69.

Shi, L., & Singh, D. A. (2004). Delivering health care in America. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

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