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Healthcare Case Analysis

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Managing our healthcare system and its rising cost continue to be a challenge. It is evident when reading the CBO excerpt from 1992 because many of these issues still remain true today in 2017. Our healthcare market is still not competitive, premiums are still rising, as is the cost of healthcare services, as we make more advances in medical technology. There is still an access and affordability issue that US citizens face in the current health market. Efforts are being made to address these concerns however current policies need updating to help slow down the steep rise in cost we face here in the US.
While the above is true, with the passing of the ACA there have been some notable changes to our current healthcare system. In the past …show more content…

According to an article in Annals of Internal Medicine, “One major difference between the costs of care in the United States and those in other developed nations is the price per unit of care-physician fees, payments per hospital day, and pharmaceutical prices” (Bodenheimer 2005). Another major influence comes from the high prices new medical technologies create when introduced to the healthcare market (CBO 1992). One way to combat the above issue is to follow Medicare and Medicaid’s physician payment tier policy. This only allows physicians to get a set payment for a service no matter what is billed to Medicare and Medicaid.
It is challenging to curb the growth of costs of healthcare insurance for many of the same reasons the CBO report addressed. One topic was moral hazard, we cannot easily determine the cost of healthcare insurance or what types of treatments a physician might prescribe for a consumer. This can cause insurance companies to pay high prices to expensive treatments (CBO 1992). We then look at the relatively small amount we as consumers pay for healthcare insurance, from co pays and deductibles, the prices we pay for these treatments do not even out the true cost to use them. These high costs then have to spread among an insurance companies policy holders which then can drive up the cost of healthcare, which is what we still see today. Another important topic to note as was

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