The price of health insurance continues to climb unabated. As the number of uninsured in America swells to 45 million people, many look to your political leaders for answers and relief.
Presidential campaign rhetoric about how exactly to control skyrocketing medical care costs provides only short-term solutions centered on the sticker price. But the administration should address long-term solutions to the spiraling crisis.
In 2002, the United States spent $1.6 trillion, or nearly 15 percent of GDP, on health expenditures. Medicare, the government's single payer model for seniors, spent $267 billion.
Analysts project national health care expenditures to attain $3.1 trillion by 2012 - nearly twice the total amount spent in 2002. The dramatic numbers have a tendency to overstate the obvious - for a lot of, the cost of insurance is often as much, or even more, than rent or perhaps a mortgage. Until the administration places its focus on the rising cost of healthcare, those costs will continue steadily to escalate far exceeding the rates of earnings. Whether you subscribe to a greater monthly premium charged by an HMO or a payroll tax collected by Uncle Sam, someone has to pay for the bill. Shifting the burden from our premium bill to our tax bill isn't a suitable solution.
You will find basic initiatives that policymakers need to address in an attempt to streamline the delivery system and minimize the soaring cost of health care.
First, encourage investments in technology improvements across all levels of the medical care delivery system, including insurers, hospitals and physicians. For a $1.6 trillion industry in the 21st century, the technology employed is comparable to driving a Model T on a highway full of modern cars.
Consider the banking industry. An easy bit of plastic, from any bank, lets you purchase anything from antiques on eBay to milk at the area grocery store. In healthcare, the bit of plastic serving as an ID card serves little purpose other than to inform the physician where you can send the bill. Physicians and their staffs then spend an inordinate timeframe completing the correct paperwork to get paid.
Inefficiencies are expensive. Administrative expenses would be the fastest-rising element of health expenditures. In 2002, public and private insurance spent $105 billion on administrative expenses, almost 13 percent a lot more than in 2001. Support for developing common standards and technology improvements is important to eliminate the costly inefficiencies that donate to rising health costs.
Next, support the release of cost and quality information. Most of us know where we can find a very good deal on an automobile, mortgage or even shoes. But how many people can afford to purchase something without ever knowing the purchase price?
Are you aware the typical cost of a physician office visit? We've grown used to the minimal office co-payment since the benchmark for the cost of delivering care. Yet who would seriously look at a $10 co-payment a sufficient amount for physician treatment?
As consumers, we're asked to bear a larger share of medical care costs. Inturn, we must demand more details about price and quality. Disclosure of such information has the potential to really have a profound impact on consumer behavior and the fee and quality of health care. Such transparency should reform inequities and deficiencies in the price of health services.
There's not one magic bullet to solving the difficulties facing the American health care system. Our bodies is definitely an immense and complex web of interdependencies. Expanded public financing and subsidies will give you only short-term relief unless the drivers of healthcare expenditures are resolved. Solely addressing the problem by throwing additional money at it, public or private, while ignoring the elephant in the living room serves little to ease the large financial burden the medical care system has become.
We ought to accept the fact that medical care in the United States is expensive and get to work with long-term solutions that will effectively control costs. We have the capacity to control healthcare costs in this country; what we lack will be the commitment and stamina to have it done.
Author Bio
JOHN R. CANTILLO is vice president of underwriting at Vista Health Plan Inc. in Hollywood, Florida. An industry expert with an increase of than 10 years of experience in health insurance, he received his MBA from the University of Florida. Cantillo is a member of the Health Underwriting Study Group, a national think tank and information source for medical health insurance executives. Reach him at (954) 965-3420
Presidential campaign rhetoric about how exactly to control skyrocketing medical care costs provides only short-term solutions centered on the sticker price. But the administration should address long-term solutions to the spiraling crisis.
In 2002, the United States spent $1.6 trillion, or nearly 15 percent of GDP, on health expenditures. Medicare, the government's single payer model for seniors, spent $267 billion.
Analysts project national health care expenditures to attain $3.1 trillion by 2012 - nearly twice the total amount spent in 2002. The dramatic numbers have a tendency to overstate the obvious - for a lot of, the cost of insurance is often as much, or even more, than rent or perhaps a mortgage. Until the administration places its focus on the rising cost of healthcare, those costs will continue steadily to escalate far exceeding the rates of earnings. Whether you subscribe to a greater monthly premium charged by an HMO or a payroll tax collected by Uncle Sam, someone has to pay for the bill. Shifting the burden from our premium bill to our tax bill isn't a suitable solution.
You will find basic initiatives that policymakers need to address in an attempt to streamline the delivery system and minimize the soaring cost of health care.
First, encourage investments in technology improvements across all levels of the medical care delivery system, including insurers, hospitals and physicians. For a $1.6 trillion industry in the 21st century, the technology employed is comparable to driving a Model T on a highway full of modern cars.
Consider the banking industry. An easy bit of plastic, from any bank, lets you purchase anything from antiques on eBay to milk at the area grocery store. In healthcare, the bit of plastic serving as an ID card serves little purpose other than to inform the physician where you can send the bill. Physicians and their staffs then spend an inordinate timeframe completing the correct paperwork to get paid.
Inefficiencies are expensive. Administrative expenses would be the fastest-rising element of health expenditures. In 2002, public and private insurance spent $105 billion on administrative expenses, almost 13 percent a lot more than in 2001. Support for developing common standards and technology improvements is important to eliminate the costly inefficiencies that donate to rising health costs.
Next, support the release of cost and quality information. Most of us know where we can find a very good deal on an automobile, mortgage or even shoes. But how many people can afford to purchase something without ever knowing the purchase price?
Are you aware the typical cost of a physician office visit? We've grown used to the minimal office co-payment since the benchmark for the cost of delivering care. Yet who would seriously look at a $10 co-payment a sufficient amount for physician treatment?
As consumers, we're asked to bear a larger share of medical care costs. Inturn, we must demand more details about price and quality. Disclosure of such information has the potential to really have a profound impact on consumer behavior and the fee and quality of health care. Such transparency should reform inequities and deficiencies in the price of health services.
There's not one magic bullet to solving the difficulties facing the American health care system. Our bodies is definitely an immense and complex web of interdependencies. Expanded public financing and subsidies will give you only short-term relief unless the drivers of healthcare expenditures are resolved. Solely addressing the problem by throwing additional money at it, public or private, while ignoring the elephant in the living room serves little to ease the large financial burden the medical care system has become.
We ought to accept the fact that medical care in the United States is expensive and get to work with long-term solutions that will effectively control costs. We have the capacity to control healthcare costs in this country; what we lack will be the commitment and stamina to have it done.
Author Bio
JOHN R. CANTILLO is vice president of underwriting at Vista Health Plan Inc. in Hollywood, Florida. An industry expert with an increase of than 10 years of experience in health insurance, he received his MBA from the University of Florida. Cantillo is a member of the Health Underwriting Study Group, a national think tank and information source for medical health insurance executives. Reach him at (954) 965-3420
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