In the United States, our wellness(health) care is among the most expensive in the world. Still, we don’t get the best wellness care. Our system is broken, but without understanding and knowing the reasons, we can’t fix it. So today, we’ll be looking at why wellness protection in the United States is so expensive, and how it can be remedied.
Reason
Individual medical policies are like personal life protection policies, they generally become more expensive within each, and with wellness care costs skyrocketing, so are the wellness protection. However, that’s not the reason why less than 28% of Americans do get medical protection from government-funded programs. So, why is the wellness care system so expensive?
Medical Costs
Medical costs are the main factor that drives the premium of wellness protection up. For example, the federal government spent 23 percent this year in wellness care costs and only 14 percent on education. So, it’s no surprise that along with increased wellness care cost, comes increased medical protection premiums. Here is the thing about wellness protection that most people don’t know. Protection is a bit like a gamble between you and their trans company. The company bets that they’ll take in more money in premiums than they have to pay out in benefits, while you are paying a bonus every month just in case something happens.
Now, if many sick people buy wellness protection and use the benefits, what happens is that the protection companies have to pay more than they get. As a result, the protection companies often have no other options than to increase the premium, so they can keep up with paying the claims.
Cost of Medical School Training and Education
There are so many reasons why wellness protection is expensive, but let’s look at the fact that the cost of medical school training and education is ridiculous. Putting up a massive barrier to entry, essentially making it required, the doctors are paid exceptionally well to justify the high price of tuition.
Demand for the latest Technology
Other factors that make wellness protection expensive include the need for the newest Technology and the high cost of malpractice protection that medical providers must purchase. Thus, when such medical technologies are brought into the wellness care system, it is only natural for the cost of treating a patient to be on the high side
Medical Fraud
Another reason for the expensive wellness protection is that wellness care providers gain the system to earn even more money than they already do. For, instance drug companies are handed over coupon cards to give to their patients, to lower their out-of-pocket expenses, so that they’ll choose the drug companies to brand drug, over the generic prescriptions. In most cases, the patient generally wants the drug with a lower co-payment even though it costs the protection company a lot more money when the patient uses name-brand drugs over generic versions.
And this invariably increases the cost of protection premiums that such patients or the employers will have to pay.
Emergency Medical care
Let’s face it, whether people have wellness protection or not if they get sick, where do they go? Most likely, they go to the emergency room, and emergency care is costly. In most cases, it is often irrelevant, but still, people still choose to go there, thus raising the cost of their medical bills.
SOLUTION
Wellness care costs are skyrocketing. Since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, wellness care costs have gone up by double digits. Each year, the wellness care bill did get more people insured and helped with issues like pre-existing conditions. However, the problem with the wellness care law isn’t what it tried to do. It’s what it failed to do; reduce costs. So, here are some ideas, I believe, would help reduce the ravaging cost of medical protection in the united states.
Rolling Back the Tax burden on Protection companies.
We can roll back the tax burden on protection companies. The ACA added a 60billion dollar tax on wellness insurers, which made them charge more on consumers to cover their costs. So, fees should be rolled back to protection companies so that, the cost of premiums won’t be on the high side
Lowering regulations on Wellness Plans
We can lower the regulations on wellness plans. The ACA has a lot of requirements that force protection plans to cover an incredibly big list of benefits. If you want a bare-bones protection plan that includes catastrophic events like a car accident, or cancer, you currently can’t get one. Thus, by boosting the benefits of every project, it restricts competition and drives up prices by forcing smaller wellness insurers out of the marketplace.
Also, low-cost catastrophic plans that are typically purchased by younger, healthier people, are no longer available because of the ACA requirements. So, introducing as many wellness insurers to the marketplace as possible can drive down prices by encouraging businesses to compete, and to cut costs. Instead, the ACA did the exact opposite, less competition and higher rates.
Encouraging Medical Innovations
The cost to bring a new drug to market already exceeds 2.5billion dollars and the ACA places an additional 22billion dollar tax burden on innovator drug companies. The same businesses that produce life-saving medications and cures for those in need. Punishing drug producers forces them to charge even higher prices to make up for the lost money in research development and taxes. If we encourage and not punish drug makers, it will lead to more breakthroughs and lower costs, a win-win for all of us.
In a nutshell, as wellness care costs skyrocket doesn’t forget that the free market is our best chance to rein them in. We have to revive our wellness sector!