Health Finance and Delivery Policy. Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

Health Finance and Delivery Policy
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Health Finance and Delivery Policy
Health care spending in the United States is higher than in any other country worldwide despite its capability to provide the highest quality health care. Furthermore, the government spends more on health care to national income than other first world countries. In 2017, the U.S. spent a total of $3.5 in the healthcare system, which has continued to jeopardize the country's international competitiveness. Health care experts have predicted that the cost might cost $5.7trillion by 2026 if immediate measures to cut the spending are not implemented (Hampson et al., 2018). Moreover, the rising health financing has burdened families and weakening the economy at the federal and state levels. Several factors have contributed to these increasing costs, which are mainly interconnected, evolving, and multifaceted. These causative factors have fluctuated in their impact during any given period (Hampson et al., 2018). Moreover, these factors vary by state and region, and others are fundamentally inherent. Some of the common elements are the rising population, expensive technology in healthcare, and incidences of disease prevalence.
According to research conducted by Dieleman et al. (2019), the cost of health care spending increased by $933.5 billion from 1996 to 2013. The study focused on five primary factors driving the rising cost: population increase, aging population growth, disease prevalence, service utilization, and intensity. They found that the most significant factors were population growth and the rising number of the aging population. The population growth had cost the U.S. a total of $269.5 billion, which accounted for a 23.1% increase from 1996 to 2013. Furthermore, the aging accounted for 11.6% of healthcare spending, which amounted to $135.7 billion (Dieleman et al. 2019). Therefore, the study concluded that the U.S. was spending more on people due to the rising population. Furthermore, the study found out that more people were enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare, which were the two main healthcare programs that have the most spending. By 2017, approximately 57.6 million people were employed in Medicare, and 72.7 million were on Medicaid (Liu & Brook, 2017).
A study conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found out that diabetes is the leading medical condition that is responsible for the rising and increase in healthcare spending over the last two decades. The increased cost in the treatment of diabetes was responsible for approximately $44.4 billion of the $64.4 billion increase in prices to treat that disease from 2010 to 2018 (Clarke et al., 2017). Apart from diabetes, other illnesses that contributed to the rise include high blood pressure: $46.6 billion, depression: $30.8 billion, osteoarthritis: $29.9 billion, and low-back and neck pain: $57.2 billion. Furthermore, there is increased spending on health insurance premiums, which are at the center of the U.S. healthcare costs (Clarke et al., 2017). According to the...