Rising Health Care Cost

624 Words3 Pages

Rising Health care costs: how to control it
In U.S., spending on health care has been growing at a faster pace than spending in rest of economy since 1960s. The government was spending 4.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP) at that time, which grew to 16.2% in 2007, and is expected to rise to 20% of GDP by 2017(1). Without any drastic measures, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), these numbers will project to 25% of GDP in 2025, 30% by 2035, and 49% in 2082 (2). The major components of U.S. health care spending are hospitals (31%), physician and clinical services (21%), pharmaceuticals (10%), and other spending (25%) (3).
Technological change and progress has attributed to almost half of the growth in medical spending in recent years (4). Although the …show more content…

SUPPORT:
There has been an astronomical rise in concern about high health care costs among people and members of congress. There is an increased awareness that despite the higher costs, health care system is not producing the better outcomes. And as member of the political system, we do not want health care spending to affect other economic indicators.
CONCLUSION:
Despite higher spending on health care, the U.S. health care system ranked last on patient safety, efficiency and equity according to the Commonwealth Fund survey. Our aim should be reduction of high healthcare costs without decreasing people access to health care or sacrificing quality. A collaborative effort is required to work on above recommendations to solve the problems besetting our health care system.
References:
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3096004/
2. www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/11-13-LT-Health.pdf on 28 August 20
3.