In the first three months of 2023, 25.3 million people who needed healthcare didn’t have access to it. All U.S. citizens should have the ability to use healthcare. Medicaid and Medicare help approximately one-third of people who wouldn’t normally be able to obtain healthcare: this is great, but not good enough. Healthcare costs in the U.S. are far too high and far too inaccessible. This system harms so many lives.
The United States of America is the highest spending country in the world in terms of healthcare. Healthcare costs in the U.S. are so excessive that the average person in the United States spends $12,914 per year on healthcare. U.S. spending on healthcare reached approximately $4.5 trillion dollars in 2022. With the average salary of people in the United States being $63,795, $12,914 spent on healthcare per person on average is far too much.
Some strategies can overcome the need for immediate care, like telemedicine. Telemedicine is a system in which people with healthcare needs who can’t afford it or just can’t get to a hospital can use telecommunication technologies to converse with medical personnel about their needs. Telemedicine is not a new idea, first originating in Nebraska in the 50’s, but Arizona has implemented some very new, extremely useful advancements to this system. First, they renamed it from telemedicine to telehealth, which allows insurance providers to be more inclusive in what they cover. Second, it allows the pediatrician to prescribe medication completely wirelessly. Tools like this have been implemented into our healthcare system, which is a step in the right direction, but we are not quite there yet. Obviously, if a poor man falls off a wall and breaks his leg, telehealth is not going to help, but for more basic needs, like getting a cold, telehealth could get that man some antihistamines.
The healthcare system’s expenditures could be so high because of the absence of a free market. A free market is one in which there are so many buyers and sellers that not a lone buyer or seller is able to determine the price of a product or service. Imagine a woman with a migraine that she’s had for a week. If that woman goes to the hospital, she has no idea if she needs a big bottle of water and $50 dollars worth of aspirin or a $60,000 dollar neurosurgery. Of course, this is an extreme example, but sadly not one far off of what’s actually going on.
Offering Medicare for all would eliminate the costs of inaccessibility to all U.S. citizens. In 2023, the Medicare for All act was introduced. The Medicare for All act would provide Medicare for all, obviously. If this bill was passed, healthcare costs in the U.S. would plummet, and taxes would go up a little bit. Health care anywhere is a huge deal and the prices in the United States raise some concern. This system needs to be fixed, and we have ways to do that. They just need to be implemented.
Sources:
Leonhardt, David, and Ian Prasad Philbrick. “Cutting Health Care Costs.” The New York Times, 28 Aug. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/briefing/cutting-health-care-costs.html
Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “How Can We Reduce the Cost of an Increasingly Expensive Healthcare System?” Www.pgpf.org, 19 Oct. 2022, www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/10/how-can-we-reduce-the-cost-of-an-increasingly-expensive-healthcare-system.
Cox, Hannah. “Arizona Just Found a Way to Reduce Healthcare Costs.” Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2024. Gale in Context. Accessed 4 Nov. 2024. Originally published as “Arizona Just Found a Way to Reduce Healthcare Costs,” Foundation for Economic Education, 10 May 2021.
“U.S. Uninsured Rate Hits Record Low in First Quarter of 2023.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
blogs.cdc.gov/nchs/2023/08/03/7434/#:~:text=Highlights%20from%20the%20report%3A,the%20same%20period%20in%202022. Accessed 05 Nov. 2024.
“S.1655 – 118th Congress (2023-2024): Medicare for All Act.” Congress.gov, 2023, www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1655.
