Healthcare for all

I definitely believe that all these factors contribute to the increase in national health spending per capita. My undergraduate major at UCI was biomedical engineering and we were always learning about new devices that were being developed or about the advancements in artificial organs, stents, pacemakers, etc. All these are very important pieces of technology that I do believe should be studied and researched but they do cost a lot of money. At UCI each of my engineering professors were working on a different device, in a different laboratory with different equipment, researchers, computers, and so on. Although this is all necessary to run a successful research project, it all costs a lot of money. The national government must fund all these research projects and hospitals must pay for all this new equipment that is being made available to them. Also, now that President Obama has lifted the ban on stem cells, research in this field is going to increase drastically meaning even more money is going to be spent. Furthermore, as we discussed in class, inefficiencies play a factor in this rise because extra vaccines are given and unnecessary tests are being run.

Today in the California Healthline there was an article that mentioned how officials in Sacramento County and Orange County are planning on getting rid of some positions, laying off workers, and even cutting back on some services on health programs because of budget deficits. This is just going to results in more people going to the emergency room and free clinics. As a volunteer in the emergency department of a hospital, I always see just how packed the ER can get. Many people come in for non-urgent cases because they don't have insurance and are taking up a lot of space in the department. And just as rwoon said, the ER must pay for these uninsured individuals and as a result, medical service costs increase. Therefore, I believe that the best way to solve this problem is universal healthcare. This way the government would pay for health care so that it can be affordable for all.