Healthcare costs in the US are increasing due to extreme levels on inefficiency, misallocation of funds, and defensive medicine. Unfortunately, medicine is a business, and as time goes on it's being run more and more like a business. Between the excessively complicated insurance and reimbursement system, liability issues, and the ever-growing underserved population there is too much disorganization for the system to run efficiently. It needs to be simplified and streamlined. 

Unfortunately, capitalist notions of free-market competition don't work for health care. Instead of providing options and lowering costs for consumers as it is intended to, it instead adds yet another pressure to the system. Healthcare costs would be streamlined if we adopted a more unified and consist healthcare system focused on universal coverage, minimizing costs, maximizing efficiency, and cooperation.

It's All About the Money

I definitely believe that there are many factors that contribute to the increase in national health spending per capita.  I mean there are a lot of people without insurance that use the emergency room for primary care.  By this time, the patient has probably let the problem get bad enough to even obtain medical attention and at this time it probably cost a ridiculously amount of money.   We also need to consider the cost of insurance.  The cost of insurance is progressively increasing each year.  Not only is the premium expensive, but the co-pay is also increasing.  These problems really hit families with low SES.   Going on with insurance, HMOs are very inefficient.  For example, I needed to see an allergist.  So I had to go to my primary care provider, pay a $30 co-pay, the doctor put in a request for a referral, I then had to come back to my primary care provider  to provide a blood sample (costing another $30 co-pay), and then 2 weeks later finally got approved to see an allergist (which is another $30 co-pay).  Summary: 2 weeks later, 2 primary care providers, and $90àjust for a referral. GAAHHHH! This was a very very inefficient process. New developments in technology also contribute to the increase cost of per capita health spending.  As more research, time, and money are spent to develop new medical procedures, the costs of these procedures are extremely expensive. 

In the current recession, less people will be uninsured. Less people will be going to get treatment meaning more people being untreated and letting their illness worsen.  The government needs to put more emphasis on healthcare.  If the state and national government sets healthcare as a priority and increase the budget, then more people will be able to seek medical assistance.  

Necessary Commodity vs. Necessary Evil

Ditto to the comment posted by M. Arias. Americans will swipe and pay for the latest and most up-to- date gadgets, cars, fashion, make-up, surgery etc. The escalating amount spent on health care perpetuates because health, like gas (or clothing, a beautiful home, a lap top , ipod), is a necessary commodity valued by Americans which will be purchased at any cost. CEO's of HMO's are aware that increasing the tag price on a needed surgery or an MRI or a medication for a chronic disease will not turn away its customers, so why not hike up the digits on health which is gauranteed to be paid for by desperately ill consumers who need the service to survive. The health care system can be compared to economics as stated by White (2007) in "Health Care Spending Growth: How Different is the United States from the Rest of the OECD?". Health care is a commodity that possesses a very high demand: mothers, children, and elderly are in constat need of medical attention. The high demand of health care and the desperation to attain it gives HMO's the power to rasie prices at their own will. Treatment, medication, and the service to care for the ill is a necessary commodity to survice. The necessary evil is acquiring those services through filters here in the U.S.: HMO's, private insurance.

We Are a Sad Sad Society --> Nation

If we compare ourselves to other countries, we are one sad community. What are spending on and why? I agree with Anand in the ridiculous competing prices amongst health care providers, but then again, we are spending in selfish ways.
Let me rephrase that… health care is catering to the rich, so whatever the rich can afford will be the competing price amongst those providers. Wafa’s cartoon is so amusing, so funny, and, unfortunately, so true. This country is about providing for the rich because it is given that they can afford it. Technology can be a contributing factor in this rise, but I don’t think it may be a determining factor. This spending will have a large impact on poor communities (duh!) as prices will rise and they will continue to be unable to access quality health care. “There’s no need in getting their hopes up.” Consequently, this sad situation is in a much needed health care reform system. Lets consider universal health care and re-evaluate our communities and meeting the quality of life for all and not just the rich.

Living Beyond Our Means

Lets face it most Americans love to live comfortably and will do what it takes to attain this level of comfort whether it means barrowing on the house, purchasing it with plastic, or simply doing whatever it takes to have what they want. If it’s the latest gadget or trend I’m sure most will go out of their way to get it. So the same mentality is set in place when we need medical coverage. If you want or need it bad enough you must do whatever it takes to get it, right? Well unfortunately medical coverage is a lot more costly than the latest gadget or trend. It leaves us with big dents in our pockets. So, different standards have to be in place for attaining quality medical coverage in the U.S. such as smoothing out the kinks in all the administrative work, regulating how much pay will go towards specific procedures, and above all giving consumers the buying power they deserve when it comes to receiving quality medical coverage. In these tough economic times, hopefully our administration will see the cracks in the system (as promised will go through the book with a finetooth comb) and work towards improving our health spending per capita so that future generations do not have to work to pay our big deficit we have created.

All About Whose Money?

From the birth of health care in the US, the system was focused on making money.  Any kind of public service that wasn't able to be governed by the free market was quickly attacked and shut down by those who were in the position of losing profits.  I never thought about the extent to which Americans seem to have an innate need for the concept of the free market in any industry.  That tradition has carried into present times where our health system is run by a hodge podge system of private and public funding.  Most working Americans have the attitude that they are contributing to the economy by participating in the work force and have earned the right to health care.  The idea is that if one can pay for better health care than they deserve to be treated better than those who cannot.  The problem is that no one (or so few that I can't name one person I know who is exuberant over their coverage) is actually getting this superior service.  The reality is that we are all paying for each other's health care and that simple idea isn't clearly conveyed to the general public.  If more people were educated on the exact breakdown of where their employer contribution combined with their own out of pocket costs to health insurance were going, I think there would be a huge backlash as to how money is spent regarding health care in the country.  Our current health care system is not set up for a free market battle which is unfortunate since Americans insist on pushing this idea upon all markets regardless on how inefficient the result.  

"They Couldn't Afford it Even if it Works."

Perhaps we're spending too much on technology to treat growing medical problems and not enough on technology to research and prevent the problems from growing.

I'm no expert on economic issues but it's my humble opinion that if we spent more in the research field we'd potentially spend less in the treatment field. It's not that we don't need technology or it isn't a major benefit in the treatment realm. On the contrary, I feel as though it is vital. However, it's just as important, if not more, to figure out how to prevent people from getting sick in the first place.

At risk of being sounding idealistic regarding a system that we know is faulty and far from being patient-centric, I believe the most important issue here is how that increase is going to impact those who are already struggling to afford health care. What good is an increase in spending when it's not benefiting the people who might need it most?

I'm not sure there's a real answer to that question because the situation is so complex. A poorly executed system in any field drains unnecessary resources. Technological advances cost a lot of money but few people argue the spending when there may be some tiny remote chance the technology could treat cancer or detect genetic disorders. It's a field that allows for a lot of justification for spending but when the affects of that trickle down to the pocketbooks of everyday Americans what do you say? I think that's an age-old question whenever it comes to spending, anywhere.

I believe its time that we start to utilize our resources to their fullest and start focusing on how to make it so that people need these expensive treatment technologies less. It's such a loaded issue and so multi-facited that to think there there are even only twenty factors that play a large role is, I think, naive. There are so many people, organizations, businesses, so much politics and the like involved that before we can even get people to care about how we can make everything more cost efficient we need to come up with a better understanding of why it is and why we should.