BHA 415 CA2 Finance (Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay)

BHA 415 CA2 Finance
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BHA 415 CA2 Finance
The increasing cost of healthcare in the United States makes for one of the contentious issues facing the country today. The federal and state governments are on constant discussions and deliberations over the right course of action to take in curbing the rising expenditures in healthcare that even surpass budgetary allocations at both levels of government. The United States has the highest healthcare expenditure in the world with projections for increasing costs going into the future, raising concerns over the issue. According to Dieleman et al. (2017), the United States spent 17.8% of the country’s budgetary allocation on healthcare expenditure which totalled to approximately $3.2 trillion CITATION Die17 \l 1033 (Dieleman, 2017). Dieleman and colleagues further indicate that healthcare expenditure over the past two and half decades has been increasing at an annual growth rate of approximately 4%, which is 1.6% higher the country’s rate of economic growth within the same period CITATION Die17 \l 1033 (Dieleman, 2017). Healthcare expenditures take different forms in the United States, including the high-deductibles, out-of-pocket expenses, co-pays, and high insurance premiums remitted for the delivery of quality services. The outlined payment plans function to increase the overall cost of healthcare and thus necessitating the implementation of government policies to help in reducing or rather curbing the projected rising costs of healthcare. These payment plans and procedures are factors of policies developed by both the local and state governments to help in cushioning citizens from the financial burden of the rising cost of healthcare. Provided herein is an evaluation of some of the factors influencing policymaking in the United States in the effort to curb the rising cost of healthcare.
Policies such as the Affordable Care Act make for some of the government initiatives that function to cushion members of the public from the rising cost of healthcare by reducing the complex nature of the payment programs for medical care CITATION Val15 \l 1033 (Valdovinos, 2015). Policy initiatives such as Medicaid and Medicare also function to help the low-income earners in the United States to access medical services at subsidized costs through their unique reimbursement programs to the care facilities offering such services to eligible members. However, there still remains a large number of people who have limited access to medical services due to other underlying factors or reasons that facilitate the rise in healthcare costs. These factors include an increase in the aging population, population growth, utilization of medical services, cost of services and intensity of using the same, and the prevalence of the disease in society....