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United States Should The Medical Cost

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I. Introduction I have always wondered that why the medical cost in United States is outrageously expensive as simple diagnosis of a symptom from the doctor would cost ten times more in United States than Korea. Furthermore, if people are already paying large amount of money for these healthcare services it is natural to ask if we are receiving the finest care in the world. However, there is numerous comparison results already have been made so far suggests that United States health expenditure may not be the most efficient spending in the world. In contrast, statistics continuously disclose that we are on the lower group among the developed countries in terms of efficiency. According to the World Health Organization, United States have …show more content…

With these outstanding evidences the Commonwealth Fund placed United States last in terms of overall health system ranking measured by different categories of access to care, equity, quality, efficiency and healthy lives compared to other developed countries. Among those rank categories, our health system is specifically placed last in access to care and efficiency. 37% of the adults in United States reported that they did not receive the recommended treatment, surgery or follow up care due to high cost. 40% of adults who had visited emergency room reported that they could have instead just visited a regular doctor if it was available. U.S. was also ranked last in infant mortality rate and amount of deaths preventable through timely access to healthcare. All these quantitative data of doctor consultation per capita, access to care and efficiency suggest that for how much average US citizen is paying for individual healthcare is greater than other developed countries but efficiency of services does not necessarily follow the same rank as the spending. This paper aims to raise the question about source of high medical expenditure regardless of its low efficiency in general. II. Background In order to specify the source of high healthcare expenditure, we need to know which factors consists of total US health spending. In U.S., most of the healthcare insurance is provided by the private insurance companies

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