What is meant by the health care crisis?

Question

Why is the aging of our society important when considering the future costs of health care: How can we control health care costs? What about the possibility of national health insurance?

Answer 1

when you can't afford heath care. we need heath-care in this country the political obstacles is nothing but BS. The economic structure just needs to be restructure without the rich being so dam greedy

Answer 2

By definition, a health care crisis merely states in terms that the availability of quality care is at a critical level.

Some argue that a national health care system would lower the standards and options available because the jobs in the medical field wouldn't carry as high of a pay rate as it does now.

The issues of smoking and obesity are a burden on the system too...as is the recent upsurge of children with disabilities.

If we moved to socialized medicine I guarantee that within 10 to 20 years the idea of voluntary euthanasia would then be addressed more seriously.

A majority of insurance companies are geared towards specialized medicine and in the long run that costs more.

Health care costs could be better regulated if some drugs were made legal and DEA restrictions lifted...this is all because whenever someone with no insurance gets sick or in pain, they go to the ER to get treated because they know the hospital will more than likely write it off as an indigent expense.

Pharmaceutical companies are partly to blame too. They keep coming out with new medications to treat the same problems that dozens of other, more reliable and longer test marketed drugs are out there for...some would say that drug companies are even inventing new disorders so they can market a pill for these conditions when there are in fact NO cures for the problems.

I used to work for a managed care agency and although we took most insurance plans, Medicaid was the biggest. Someone asked me one time what the best insurance plans was and I told them flat-out that it was Medicaid. That was ten years ago. Now, from what I understand and have heard friends saying, Medicaid is a DREADFUL insurance and only covers the bare minimum in treatment. For example, if you go get a tooth pulled, Medicaid won't pay to have you knocked out...all it pays for is novocaine. My friend went in to have a little cyst removed from the bottom of her foot and Medicaid didn't pay for an adequate anesthetic...so the procedure hurt really bad.

I just love hearing people say that folks on Medicaid are "getting a free ride"..well...that free ride equates to treatment by overburdened, underpaid and inadequate treatment teams. Just knowing what I do about seeing what people on Medicaid go through, I think socialized medicine would be a horrible idea because everyone would receive the same crappy care (or lack thereof) that people are now.

Major insurance companies charge too much because they're billed at a higher rate by medical institutions.

You pose an excellent question but with the economy and the health of the typical American, there's no viable solution other than the health savings or share of cost plans that aren't too popular right now. Major insurance carriers will block the share of cost and health savings plans as long as they can because it only means an inevitable demise of their profits.

Just another example of how big corporations only care about turning a buck although millions of people's health and lives are the bargaining chip.

Answer 3

I guess I'm what you would call AGED and have no health insurance. I'm also healthy (knock on wood). Most people my age have at least 4 prescriptions they take daily and see the Dr. really often. They have insurance but it doesn't cover all of their medical costs. If I had to go to the Dr., there's a clinic that takes low income people like me and they would bill the govt. for most of my costs....taxpayers pay for me. May as well have national health insurance like Canada does, for example.