Do you know what healthcare is? Healthcare, also denoted as health care, is the improvement of your health through prevention, treatment, diagnosis, or cure of illness, injury, disease and other mental and physical impairments.
Usually, healthcare services are delivered by allied health fields and health professionals. Healthcare in the United States constitutes medicines, pharmacy, dentistry, midwifery, optometry, nursing, psychology, physical therapy, audiology, occupational therapy, and many other health professions. One can seek tertiary, primary, and secondary care through healthcare facilities.
Do you know that New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York is amongst the world’s busiest hospitals? There are several hospitals and healthcare facilities available in the country and all around the world. Every country’s healthcare system contributes a lot to the country’s development, economy, and industrialisation. Not only this, but the US healthcare promotes mental and physical health and well-being of the people.
Healthcare in the US
The United States is a country with almost 50 states, and the country’s regions can be grouped into five different categories based on geographic position: West, Southeast, Northeast, Southwest, and Midwest.
In the United States, healthcare facilities are mostly owned by private-sector businesses. If you compare the healthcare facility in the US with other countries, you will be able to observe a huge difference between the facility and the cost. Healthcare in the United States is very expensive. There are various reasons behind it. Lets us discuss those reasons in brief.
Expensive education
The cost of healthcare education in the USA is so expensive that not everyone can afford it. If you go through the cost of four-year medical school fees in the United States, you might find it between $250,000 to $300,000. If you compare it with other countries like Canada or France, you will notice that healthcare education is much cheaper as the fees are around $50,000 in Canada and even less than that in France.
Higher educational costs let only a few students enrol on the medical course, and the ones who spend a huge amount on their studies expect to regain it by costing higher fees. So, you can’t directly blame the doctors as they have spent a lot studying medicine, making it quite obvious to charge higher fees. It’s not just about the doctors. Instead, it’s a matter of issue with the whole chain because everything is affected by something.
Shortage of professionals
As you know, the study of medicine is very expensive in the United States, so only a few people study medical courses because of a shortage of professionals.
So, you can say that higher fees are the main reason behind the shortage of medical professionals, and so the shortage makes the existing doctors more demanding. Like if the medical fees would have been low in the USA, there would have been numerous students studying medicine, which would have created competition among the doctors. So, to have more patients at their hospital, the doctors would have charged low fees and healthcare in the United States would have been much more affordable.
Higher labour cost
In the USA, doctors, nurses and other skilled people in the healthcare sector are paid a good salary. Suppose you compare the fees of doctors or other healthcare professionals with the people of the same field in other countries. In that case, you will be able to notice a vast difference between the pay of these medical professionals.
It is good to serve skilled and hardworking people with the right pay, but is it a good idea to cost too much money? Healthcare is a field that promotes the country’s economy and good mental and physical health. So, what’s the need of you being a doctor and not treating people just because they are in shortage of money?
Healthcare in the United States has been expensive for a long time and because of this, people lack proper healthcare services. If you go through the data for 2020, you might find that an average US family doctor earns approximately $214,370 yearly, and specialists earn approximately $316,000. Also, nurses in the United States earn approximately $74,250, whereas if you compare it with other countries like Switzerland and Netherlands, you will find that there, the nurses earn approximately $58,041 and $60,253.
Multiple complex systems
Healthcare in the United States is very complex; it has several separate rules, enrolment dates, funding and out-of-pocket healthcare insurance. The insurance plan may or may not cover your pharmaceutical drug insurance, and there are several other complex things about the healthcare system in the US.
As healthcare insurances are costly, not everyone can afford full-fledged healthcare insurance, which affects people’s physical and mental health.
The rising cost of drugs
Higher drug prices are a major reason behind the costly healthcare in the United States. As per the data, it was found that $1,443 is spent on one person in the USA whereas in other countries this amount is as low as $749.
The higher drug cost affects the overall healthcare system of the United States, as insurers are costed higher amounts for drugs, which affects the facility and the affordability of healthcare services by the people.
Conclusion
The United States is a developed country, but its expensive healthcare facility makes it all worthless. In the United States, 58% of community hospitals are non-profit, approximately 21% are owned by the government, whereas the other 21 are for-profit.
Healthcare in the United States has become a concern as over 27 million people do not acquire health insurance coverage. There have been several reasons like the rising cost of drugs, multiple complex systems, higher labour costs, shortage of professionals, expensive medical studies and others which have led to expensive healthcare in the United States.
The expensive healthcare system causes several issues amongst the people of the United States, like the lack to buy proper healthcare insurance for themselves and their family members. Because they lack healthcare insurance, the lack of good healthcare services affects the overall being of individuals in the country. So, the country’s government should look into this matter and try to improve it by fixing the factors influencing the cost of healthcare services.
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