Health Spending in OECDcountries in 2004 - Paper Example

1) What is the article about?

The article inclined on the discussion about how health care prices and higher per capita incomes continued to be the major reasons for the higher U.S. health spending. The article is a contribution made by three researchers and continues to compare the health policies and prices between the United States and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The researchers establish that the health care spending in the U.S. is two and a half times greater than that of the average in the OECD nations. Furthermore, the authors also determine that the U.S has the highest healthcare expenditure among the OECD countries. According to Anderson, Fragner, and Reinhardt (2007), the high investment in health care provision is a result of the high health care prices and the per capita income.The researchers explore various issues as they draw the comparisons between the health care expenditure and those of the other developed nations in the OECD. Some of the categories used in the comparison include the spending trends, inpatient and outpatient developments, a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dedicated to healthcare, and some funds dedicated towards the prevention of diseases. In almost of all of these categories, the researchers indicate that the U.S has high levels of spending in every case. The article covers all these issues and gives a clear depiction of these matters and also presents some more arguments concerning the economic factors in the OECD nations.

2) What is the evidence?

The article also presents evidence that in fact, the United States has high health expenditure as a result of the increased per capita income as well as the levels health care prices. The major piece of evidence provided by the researchers is the high prevalence of obesity and other chronic diseases in the United States. These conditions continue to impose the high levels of accessing medical care in the country. Therefore, it has been hard controlling the health care services which are a risk to a significant proportion of the population. The research by Anderson et al. (2007) further provides statistics that the medical expenditure has been high for a long time between 1994 and 2004. Furthermore, the researchers also established that in 2004, the U.S spent approximately 15.3 percent of its GDP on healthcare while a majority of the OECD nations spent less than ten percent. Moreover, the U.S focuses on minimizing inpatient admissions while the majority of the other countries focus on a hospital-centric approach (Anderson et al., 2007). The same case also applies to the outpatient sector with the country spending more than the other members. Lastly, the researchers also note that the United States spends an enormous amount of its health care funds in prevention strategies. Specifically, the U.S. spends five times more in these prevention strategies than the other OECD nations. All these are evidence that proves that the American expenditure on health care is way above the rest of the recommended levels among the OECD members.

3) Do you agree or not? WHY?

Yes I do agree. Many reasons can be collected from the article that indicates that in fact, the United States has a higher expenditure on healthcare than the other members of the OECD. As earlier noted, the health care spending of the country has been on the rise for more than two decades. The high health care expenditure has been associated with the increased numbers of both inpatient and outpatients visiting the medical facilities in the U.S (Anderson et al., 2007). The volume of the hospital visits is factored into the prices of accessing health care services to establish the expenditure level of the health care sector. Therefore, in the United States, as the article has set, there are higher numbers of both inpatients and outpatients than the rest of the OECD nations. Furthermore, the health prices of health care are also comparatively higher than in other developed countries. The budgets set for the prevention, outpatient and inpatient purposes are way above the recommended suggested for the members of the OECD nations (Anderson et al., 2007). Therefore, these expenditures represent an excess usage of the resources in health care. Furthermore, there is growing concern that the citizens fail to seek these medical services as much as the government anticipates which means that a lot of resources are wasted. Therefore, the overall expenditure is expected to be high in the U.S than in other nations.

In another scenario, the insufficiency in the number of medical attendants in the U.S has also contributed to the overall high expenditure in the health care sector. The medical staff includes the physicians and nurses. Therefore, the number of persons visiting the hospitals fails to be attended in the supposed manner which is a burden to the facility. Despite the lack of enough medical practitioners, the U.S. continues to underutilize them. For instance, Anderson et al. (2007) note that the number of inpatient hospitalization days was below the OECD recommended. Moreover, there were low levels of physician visits per capita compared to the other countries such as Japan which has a health care expenditure that is sixty-three percent less than that of the United States. Furthermore, the adoption of advanced technologies coupled with the fact that there are few practitioners also adds onto the unnecessary expenditure. The underutilization of such resources also piles up to the additional cost of health care in the country.

Socioeconomic factors also contribute to the increased expenditure on health care in the United States. One major issue that has by far been elaborated in the article by the researchers is the prevalence of chronic disorders such as obesity among the U.S population. The increase of these diseases contradicts the rapid decrease of the infectious ones (Anderson et al., 2007). Other developed nations have also been primarily affected by the issue of rapid growth in the spread of chronic diseases. Therefore, these countries have taken the initiative of developing strategies to aid in the fight against the diseases. However, due to the large population of persons with the conditions in the U.S, it has become a financial liability in the country. The prevalence of these diseases has been attributed to the poor lifestyles adopted by the majority of the Americans.

The continuous dedication of vast sums of funds to the health care sector has resulted in the derailment of other essential areas. For instance, the education sector has been one of the majorly impacted sectors that have continued to be affected by the significant health care expenditure. The government has also been allocating smaller portions for other activities such as the creation of employment opportunities which is also an important aspect of the society. Therefore, the sidelining of such essential socioeconomic factors has also been attributed to the increased expenditure dedicated to health care provision.

It is also important to note that the United States had a high per capita spending on the health care sector as compared to the other developed nations. However, it is apparent that the availability and accessibility of health care services are underutilized and therefore, a lot of resources go to waste. For instance, the insufficient number of medical practitioners is accompanied by the deployment of a lot of resources which become underutilized. Moreover, the U.S adopts different strategies to deal with various issues in the health care sector which eventually fail to work in their favor. The latter happens despite the evidence from other OECD nations that indicate effective ways of handling various issues in the health care sector without wasting essential resources. Notwithstanding the fact that the U.S has a large GDP, it has ended up dedicating a significant proportion of it to the health care sector but has not achieved the anticipated results.

In summary, despite the high expenditure dedicated to health care, the United States still suffers a larger mortality rate than most of the developed nations. This phenomenon is brought by the fact that the prevalence of chronic diseases remains high despite such dedication of resources. The U.S. has also failed to adopt conservative procedures used in the health care sector in other OECD member states which may be helpful in reducing the excessive expenditure. The failure to act as so has resulted in the marginalization of other sectors of the economy which also play an integral role in the development of the economy.

Reference

Anderson, G. F., Frogner, B. K., & Reinhardt, U. E. (2007). Health spending in OECDcountries in 2004: an update. Health Affairs, 26(5), 1481-1489.