WEEK VI. Healthcare Cost and Abuse of Funds. Business & Marketing Essay

Healthcare Cost and Abuse of Funds
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

Healthcare Cost and Abuse of Funds
Research Topic and Questions
My research topic is healthcare costs and the abuse of funds. The research questions are: What are the factors that influence the medical cost in the United States of America (USA)? How does the abuse of funds or corruption influence the accessibility, affordability, and convenience of healthcare services in the USA? How can the USA government combat corruption in the medical sector to ensure that people only pay for the services they receive? Do individuals’ social classes influence their patient care? Dieleman et al. (2016) show that the healthcare expenditure in the USA has been continually rising since 1996. In reality, the country spends over 17% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on medical expenditures (Dieleman et al., 2016). By answering the above research questions, one will understand the factors that cause the healthcare cost to keep increasing and suggest the most appropriate way to reverse the trend. 
Appropriate Hypotheses
The following are the two primary hypotheses that my paper will try to prove:
1. The abuse of funds in the medical sector contributes to the increasing healthcare cost in the USA.
2. The high prices of drugs and corruption make medical services to be inaccessible, unaffordable, and inconvenient for many Americans.
The above two hypotheses are useful to understand what contributes to the rising cost of healthcare costs in the USA. The first hypothesis will enable the researcher to reveal various ways through which funds are abused in the medical sector. The second one will show how the high cost of medications makes the majority of people not to afford high-quality treatment in USA hospitals.
Research Methods
My research will use online interviews and peer-reviewed articles that relate to my topic of study. Besides, participants who will be unavailable to perform a physical interview will receive surveys through their email addresses. Interviews conducted will involve a doctor, nurse, an individual working in a health insurance company, and a person in the USA department of health. The purpose of involving these individuals is to understand how patients pay for different services they receive from hospitals. The nurse and doctor will make it clear on how they charge different treatment procedures. Individuals from health insurers will show how such organizations help registered patients to pay their medical bills. The person working in the USA health department will show various strategies that the government has established to curb corruption in the healthcare sector. The peer-reviewed articles will come from renowned medical databases such as PubMed, EBSCOhost, government sources, and other official USA records.  
Operational Definitions of Variables or Evidence
The healthcare cost means the money that people pay to hospitals after being treated. Moreover, it involves the funds used to buy drugs in pharmacies after the doctor’s prescription. The paper will focus on how medical cost has increased from 1996 to date. When it comes to the operational definition of the abuse of funds, it r...