Many healthcare issues become prominent points in electoral campaigns, yet they remain unresolved for decades due to their complexity, which leads to disagreements in discussions of solutions. Alongside incomparably high government expenditures on healthcare, citizens give millions for out-of-pocket payments, which leads to this sector taking up to 18% of the country’s GDP (Nunn et al.). There is a drastic need to reimagine the approach to healthcare services accessibility in terms of costs through capping the prices on essential services, as the current market-driven approach has failed to promote healthy competition. It appears feasible due to the hospitals’ current ability to dictate prices on services whose absence equals premature death (Nunn et al.). This essay will review the issue of high costs of healthcare services in the United States and propose a suitable solution.
There are many differing opinions on the topic, leading to numerous heated debates on the necessity of such an approach. The primary reason for this issue is the tendency of patients to visit hospitals more than individual practitioners and private clinics (Nunn et al.). Therefore, the focus of many propositions is on this type of healthcare facility. As of now, there are examples of people receiving bills for thousands of dollars for absurd services, such as getting treated with an ice pack (Kliff). Several solutions attempt to resolve this issue yet explore different ways to influence prices.
For example, it is possible to decrease care costs by ensuring a better competitive environment through demanding transparency of hospital expenditures. On a federal and state level, governments can demand transparency by providing an advantage to facilities that meet a certain mark. Even local governments can enforce transparency by expanding the obligations of facilities that serve as the primary care providers and leveraging their tax rates (Krutz and Waskiewicz 527). The role of the judicial branch of the United States government will lie in ensuring that privacy and transparency will not become intertwined, while the executive branch must enforce transparency among all involved facilities. The legislative branch must enact laws connecting transparency with hospitals’ competitive advantage.
The second possible approach is a major overhaul of Medicaid to cover more options. There is evidence that such a move does help with preventing costs from rising too rapidly, such as during the presidency of Obama (Krutz and Waskiewicz 367). The clear focus of policies is to be determined, yet there are weak spots that can be covered even now. On a local level, employers can promote Medicaid over other options as it will grow less viable due to its expansion. The legislative system should prevent lobbyists from achieving an unfair advantage over the appearance of the new law that would promote Medicaid coverage. The judicial system must be able to find a balance between the involved sides to represent their wishes adequately. At the same time, the executive branch must ensure that this new insurance policy is upheld in every state.
However, the solution must focus on prices directly, as the rest of the measures seem complementary to the proposed approach. It is not feasible to remain on that path that leads only to a gradual increase in the costs to one’s life and well-being. Nowadays, hospitals control approximately half of all finances that come into the healthcare system, which gives them immense control over the prices (Nunn et al.). It is paramount for the U.S. government to counteract this influence via all possible channels, which implies that the previous options that use only a portion of possible ways to reduce costs are incomplete. Critics may mention that the demand controls the prices and that these funds lead to hospitals acquiring better equipment (Cutler). Partially, it is true, yet there are policies and hospitals’ financial decisions that harm the U.S. market directly. There is a possibility to lower these overinflated values through interventions on a federal level, including making reimportation legal (Cutler). Moreover, state and local governments may assist with that goal by capping hospital prices and punishing resource misallocations, such as overprovisions of unnecessary services.
In conclusion, the healthcare system must be accessible to people without becoming a money sink on its own, as it does in its current state due to the excessive demand for critical services. There are solutions that take an indirect route toward the issue of high costs, yet they fail to reach a necessary level of influence over prices. Without strictly controlling hospitals and their ability to dictate high service costs, people will continue to see life-saving medications at prices of hundreds of percent above their production values.
Works Cited
Cutler, David. “The World’s Costliest Health Care.”Harvard Magazine, 2020.
Kliff, Sarah. “She Didn’t Get Treated at the ER. But She Got a $5,751 Bill Anyway.”Vox, 2018.
Krutz, Glen, and Sylvie Waskiewicz. American Government. 2nd ed., OpenStax, 2019.
Nunn, Ryan, et al. “A Dozen Facts About the Economics of the US Health-care System.”Brookings, 2020.