What do you believe is the reason behind the high cost of medical care in America?

Question

HMOs? Doctors? Drug companies? Too much government? Too much welfare?

Answer 1

Obviously it is multiple factors. But at the top is zero tolerance for error which means any provider must have state of art equipment, run every test that applies to the condition and treatment, and keep extensive documentation. The zero tolerance is created by the patient, government and the legal system.
The pressure for perfection demands very highly trained personel in at all levels, which means high salaries to attact talented and bright people into years of training.
Medications are priced on a market will bear systems which means the same antibiotic in a hospital can be $1000 a day in the US and $20 a day in a hospital in India. This also occurs with instruments, and technical supplies.

If you mean total cost for health care, then blame all of us for vastly overusing the system. Obesity will make current costs look insignificant.

Who not to blame:
Hospitals: most are not for profit, every dollar goes into care.
Workers: Salaries are at best equal to other areas of society with similar education, and hours are much worse.
Probably not doctors: Most physicians have 11-15 years of very demanding training after high school and only a handful make what a good executive with a masters degree earns and has been earning for years before a doctor starts. Exceptions exist in the really high skill areas or oncology where few are willing to do it.

Answer 2

Waste and gouging. Doctors raise rates since insurance companies never pay up the full amounts, in return, the insurance companies raise your rates. Their is also a lot of waste in the government programs like Medicare, they use a corrupt bidding system where the government ends up paying a lot more money for the same items (kind of like the military and toilet seats).

Also, doctors are so afraid of being sued, they will order every single test they can think of to make sure you are fine, doctors have also been prescribing too many drugs thinking people just want the quick fix (true a lot of times), when they should be prescribing home remedies sometimes. For example when you have a cold, antibiotics do not do much, you need to rest. The actual lawsuits do not directly raise the price of healthcare as much as some politicians claim, but the waste in overly cautious doctors does.

Another problem is prescription drug prices, pharmaceutical companies claim they need the money for R&D (research & development), if that is so, they should share the cost with other countries, the Canadians should not get it cheaper then us. An interesting fact is, the pharmaceutical companies spend almost the same amount on R&D as they do for advertising, if they cut their advertising costs they would save a boat load of money. Their is no need for advertising drugs, your doctor should be telling you what to take, not the other way around.

One more item I wanted to mention was, since not everyone has health insurance in the United States, a lot of people end up using the Emergency Room as their primary physician, this means they share those costs with us and the government. If we had a national health insurance which everyone was forced to buy into, or taxed for it, we would not have that problem, it would also lower other costs since people would be able to afford preventive checkups.

Answer 3

Doctors spend a fortune on malpractice insurance.
Hospitals spend a fortune covering the uninsured.

I think going through what a doctor goes through to become a doctor with the responsibility they have. They deserve very good
pay. I know doctors who are making less then me as a engineer.
After they pay their insurance get 5 dollars a patient from the HMOs etc etc

So who is making the big bucks here. It would probably be a interesting exercise to see just how much PROFIT some of the major medical carriers Blue Cross, Aetna, Pacificare etc made last year.

Answer 4

Insurance costs have increased so much for doctors that I think it's definitely a factor in the high cost of medical care. Malpractice suits have gotten out of hand.

Answer 5

Too numerous to count:
frivolous law suits
HMOs out for profit only, not to help people
uninsured people who make the rest of us with insurance foot their bill
drug companies advertising their drugs to convince us we need medication for problems we didn't know we had
Government NOT stepping up to the plate to allow us all access to affordable health care
The list goes on and on

Answer 6

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Answer 7

Failure to emphasize preventative medicine. It is absolutely not doctors' fault, most of them do the best they can.

Also, we absolutely need caps on malpractice suits.

Answer 8

it takes a lot of money to maintain and upkeep every aspect of a hospital/clinic. charitable donations just arent enough.

Answer 9

I agree with the Mammal boy
Greed--outright, unadulterated, bold faced, greed !!
Period !!!

Answer 10

We're capitalists, not socialists.