• Lisa Simpson
• Aug 11,2009
• In: Finance

Urgent Managing of Healthcare Required to Stop Financial Drain

In USA healthcare is in a mess. Urgent managing of the same is required to stop financial drain and suffering of the ordinary Americans. Good treatment is synonymous with perfect partnership between the doctors and the available facilities.

Per head medical expenditure in USA was $5,711 in 2003 – it being twice that of most of the countries of Western Europe. Americans usually spend one sixth of their income on medical expenses. In affluent countries like France, Switzerland and Germany the proportion is 10% to 12%. In general in industrial nations it is 7% to 8%. Despite this hefty spending the Americans are far from healthy. The health indexes of other countries inclusive of Scandinavia and Japan are relatively many times better.

Regarding this failure of USA to be behind its peers Alan Garber and Jonathan Skinner said in a paper of National Bureau of Economic Research, said that USA was burdened with the greatest number of senior citizens who failed to take the required treatment because of prohibitive costs. Administrative costs were too steep and physicians relied heavily on electronic records.

There are other reasons behind this health backwardness of America. There is dearth of physicians and hospital beds per person. Prescribed drugs were less used while consumption of intensive and costly treatment was high. For example the proportion of magnetic resonance imaging tools per person was five times higher in USA than in most other wealthy countries.

Garber and Skinner felt that to improve health facilities the shift must move from one type of treatment to another than can be equally effective. However on this point they remained vague about specifics.

Garber and Skinner took into account a broad data of national figures. But Atul Gawande, a surgeon in USA, undertook a more micro study. He found Miami spends the maximum on health care per person. It is explained by the fact that Miami is a favourite haunt for rich retirees. They suffer from all the diseases of old age and they have fat wallets. It is little wonder then that plenty is spent on health care.

After Miami the next costly health care zone is a small county named McAllen in Texas. The irony is that the people here are not exceptionally rich with the per capital income being $12,000 but Medicare (under Federal Government) paid for each insured person is $15,000. The obvious question is why is it so? This needs deep analysis to find out the root of malaise in health care.