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National Health Care Spending in the U.S.

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Submitted By EKolb13
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National Health Care Spending in the U.S.
Erin Luchaco
HCS/440
May 21, 2012
Vernita Davis

Health care is a vital service that daily touches the lives of millions of Americans through happy, tragic, and vulnerable events. Currently, there is a debate going on in the United States about health care reform bringing up topics of concern such as access, cost, rights, efficiency, quality and value. Even though the United States has rates that cost about twice as much as other industrialized nations for health care, we are still way behind in efficiency and advancements. The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). (WHO, World health statistics, 2000). This is a large sum of money being taken from our American citizens with poor results, especially since there are still millions of citizens that do not have any medical coverage (the United States is one of few industrialized nations to not guarantee access to health care for its citizens) and those who do have coverage are not satisfied with the current level of quality. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “The United States spent more on health care per capita ($$8,086.00), and more on health care as percentage of its GDP (17.9%), than any other nation. (World health statistics. 2011). Much of these costs are being consumed by transaction costs (costs of administration, insurance, coordination between care provides) and not caring for the patients of paying the nurses, pharmacists, physicians, and various other providers. Many health insurance companies screen there potential subscribers making sure they only allow those who are healthy and most likely to not need much

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