Thought I'd publish an essay I wrote for a class last semester to get back in the swing of things...
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Health care costs, much like everything else recently, have gone up for various reasons, including inefficiencies in the health care system, administrative expenses, inflated prices, including for insurance and prescriptions as well as general health care, bad management, inept care, waste, and fraud. These costs unfortunately have been passed to the consumer, forcing everybody to pay more for care, insurance, and drugs, sometimes to the point of barely being able to afford it, or even making those who cannot afford these to forego insurance and pray that nothing bad happens to them, decide not to get treatment needed for illness, or choose which prescription out of many to buy and perhaps taking less than the required dosage to stretch the prescription for a longer period of time, or even foregoing the medicine altogether. If a patient has to make any of these choices, the road ahead for that person will not be smooth, but physicians will have to share in the brunt of uneasiness this person will undergo.
If a patient at first decides not to receive the care that one needs to get better, eventually a physician will have to deal with every illness, all in later stages, that the patient has accumulated during this time. It will be more work on the doctor trying to juggle each illness, making sure that viable treatments for each illness will not make the others worse, while these treatments will be extensive due to the patient waiting so long until he had no other choice but to take care of his ailments. A similar case can be applied for patients taking their medicine sparingly, or even not at all. The medication that was prescribed to take care of their illnesses will not be as effective if not used properly, and thus the illnesses will continue to fester and perhaps new ones will build up, and the physician will have to tiptoe around everything so as to not make things more complicated.
These complications arise in the first place because the patient does not have enough money to pay for care, insurance, or drugs. If this is the case, the patient more than likely does not have enough to pay the doctor taking care of him. According to the National Coalition on Health Care, an insurance premium for an individual is $4,400, and employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 100% since 2000. In the United States, the poverty level for a single person was $10,787 in 2007, meaning an individual below the poverty line would have to pay almost half of his annual salary towards insurance, if that person so chooses to be covered. Hence, it is likely that an individual will remain uninsured to pay for other expenses, but when the time comes that a patient has to be taken care of, how does he pay for the costs incurred? This trickles down to physicians again, who earn their livings from these payments. With costs on the rise and the economy on the downturn, it is natural to believe that more and more patients will not be able to cover the normal costs of health care, and physicians will take a hit in their time, energy, and money.
