Discussion on Healthcare Issues; a look at escalating costs
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Discussion on Healthcare Issues; a look at escalating costs
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a set of reforms with provisions that define the proposed and expected health care reforms and policies over a couple of years; introduced in 2010, the act seeks to ensure that service delivery is provided with ease and quality a patient-centered approach. Its reach was unprecedented across the unites states as it allowed citizens to access quality care and treatment at quite affordable rates. The united states government is considered one of the biggest spenders in health care with the cost being incurred by the American taxpayer. The health care expenditure exceeds USD 4 million, exceeding that of other developed nations (Kenny and Priyadarshini, 2021). However, although the public health expenditure is high, it does not meet the expected high level and quality of health. According to the latest reports, the United States rank last in the quality of health care provided amongst other members from developed nations and ranked 69 in healthcare.
Exploding healthcare costs have implemented these provisions as the cost of production also increases. It is a significant issue as it directly affects the ability of the universal healthcare plan to function well; increased costs mean that the plans for implementation of the law have to be restructured due to a bloated budget (Kenny & Priyadarshini, 2021). In the long run, the cost of providing insurance plans to the low-income earners, the disabled, and the elderly might have to be revised higher to meet the high costs. The major causes of this increase in costs are constantly increasing costs of research and production of drugs, high administrative costs with the need to staff more, expensive approach to care plans for home-based nursing care, and bad debts brought about by bankruptcy of patients. Losses in the Medicare sector that are caused as a result of manageable wastage are estimated to be approximately 30% (Brown, 2020).
Discussion on Healthcare Issues; a look at escalating costs
Our policy is to work towards providing the best quality of service at our healthcare center through efficiency and cost-friendliness. The increased high costs of healthcare providers have made these a challenge. The most pertinent issue that needs to be addressed is implementing strategic plans that are required to help the facility achieve a better growth and development rate. These include buying prescription drugs, purchasing machines and state-of-the-art technology devices, and nurse training & compensation strategies. These expenses trickle down to our customers who tend to opt for cheaper or lower services. In some cases, patients do not get all prescription drugs due to the high costs of drugs. For the medical personnel, there have been reduced training programs and halted hirings. The facility is struggling to keep the current number of nurses as their salaries have not been reduced.
To handle the issues mentioned, restructuring the facility’s workforce will be necessary to reduce the cost of operation. According to Brown (2020), restructuring comes at a high emotional cost as staff members are used to teamwork and have a family atmosphere. Administrative costs will be reduced to retain the necessary ones only. The most reasonable way of handling skyrocketing costs of operation would be providing quality health care and restructuring the health system to accommodate affordable operation costs.
References
Brown, J. P. (2020). Ethical dilemmas in healthcare. In Safety ethics (pp. 67-82). Routledge.
Kenny, C., & Priyadarshini, A. (2021, March). Review of Current Healthcare Waste Management Methods and Their Effect on Global Health. In Healthcare (Vol. 9, No. 3, p. 284). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.