make the system more efficient will help...

According to Exhibit 1, national health spending per capita is projected to increase to over $12,000 by 2016. Why do you think spending has been continually on the rise? Is it technology? Inefficiencies? Or maybe "it’s the prices, stupid"? What impact do you think this will have on businesses and families, especially with the tough economic times we are currently facing? And with all the talk about much needed health care reform, what are some options we should consider to control these costs?

Honestly this is a very difficult question to answer since there are various combination of possibilities to cause the increase of spending per capita. However most of all, I strongly believe there is an urge to reduce the unnecessary administration work and redundancy at diagnosis process. By my past experience, I was even afraid to go to school health care center just to have a check-up. I always had to wait for a long time to make an appointment (it can't be just walk-in), and when I finally got into the examination room I needed to wait for at least ten minutes till the nurse came to ask me "so what's the problem". Nurses always left shortly and then I had to wait for another 10 minutes till the real doctor came in and asked me the same question again. I don't think there is even a need to have nurses come to talk to patients before seeing the doctors, because nurses' duties are to take reports about the patients' physical condition and what the patients say about their problems. And seriously, I believe physicians can ask those questions themselves (and they do). I strongly feel redundancy of administrate work and diagnosis processes are one of the big reasons why American has spent double to triple of money on health care compare to other countries each year. As an immigrant from Taiwan, I had never experienced a problem of repeating the same symptom to various of people and spent hours just to get a small problem cured. In addition, I had never needed to fill out multiple similar questions forms every time I go see doctors. It is a vicious cycle because immigrants who are afraid to see doctors due to the language barrier and tedious treatment processes will cause them unwilling to see doctors when they have minor illness. At the end, the people who refused to see doctors will develop into severer diseases if the minor illness are not treated properly. Eventually it will cause more money since a good portion of immigrants are living under poverty and need government's support. Other countries have make their health care system more efficient while American have wasted too much energy, time, and money on something that are not necessary. If we are able to make the system more organize and reduce the unnecessary work, the cost of health care fee per person will reduce. Moreover, I agree what other classmates say about competition between insurance companies. If the policy can be regulate and uniformed the insurance fee and system, the insurances won't be reluctant due to competition.