The steadily rising cost of health care over the years has finally led to a crisis which the United States is now facing. Just as health care costs are rising, the number of uninsured Americans is also rising. At this time, nearly 35 million Americans do not have insurance. The cost of health care is increasing at double the rate of inflation, reaching costs as high as $738 billion this year. The government is constantly trying ways to reduce the cost of health care in order to get more people insured. Eventually, if a person does not have either health insurance or a lot of money, he will not even be able to get into a hospital. This is because public hospitals are not making enough money to stay open and private hospitals are buying them out. The problem with the conversion from public hospitals to private is that an individual cannot get in without health insurance.
All working Americans could attain the health care benefits necessary through the grouping of employees working for small companies to lower health insurance costs, government monetary incentives for states with an increased percentage of insured working population, and the resulting competition among medical care providers.
To begin with, grouping of small businesses to get a group rate would significantly lower the cost of health care for these workers. Many small businesses do not offer health care benefits to their employers because they just simply cannot afford it. Most of the people who are working and do not carry health insurance are people working for this type of business. The only way these small businesses could afford the health care would be to turn all the small businesses into a chain as a big business would have a chain. If this were done the small businesses could get the same group rates as the larger businesses.
Alaska is a state which is looking at a way to pool these small businesses so they can afford to provide basic medical coverage to their employees. Many of these (employers) employ part time workers for 35 hours or less simply to avoid having to give them health benefits. These employees should also be given the chance to get health benefits. Under this plan of grouping small businesses, these people would have a chance to get benefits.
Some examples of this type of plan are classifying warehouse workers, food service employees, and retail sales workers as these titles, but instead of only having a few of them there would be a large group of all these different types of employees: a large group of warehouse employees, a large group of food service employees, and a large group of retail sales people. Secondly, the federal government could use monetary incentives to get the state government to develop plans faster. If the federal government gave the state more money based on the increased percentage of workers who are insured, the state would have more money to put into health care and it would bring down the costs to businesses and consumers. Since the federal government will surely benefit by increased state responsibility in providing health care insurance, it is only logical that the federal government would encourage the states to take the initiative by providing monetary rewards. New taxes should not be the source of this money though. Workers already pay taxes to cover the elderly, the poor, and the handicapped, and should not be asked to pay more for employees who should be entitled to health care benefits already. If more people had health insurance, the federal government would save the money they now have to spend on unpaid hospital bills from people who do not have health insurance.
Initially this plan may require a few budget changes, but eventually the savings the government will receive will give the state the money they need for health insurance. Again taxes are not the answer to this problem The states of Washington and Minnesota are looking into multi-million dollar proposals to use taxes. This is definitely not the way to go though. The whole key is to give the states more incentive to develop working plans faster. Finally, the competition between different members of the medical field could be used to reduce the costs of health care. If an insurance company were to make a list of all the lower priced hospitals and give it to consumers, the higher priced doctors and hospitals would have to lower their prices or else go out of business. As the prices of actual medical care are reduced, the price of health care benefits would reduce at the same time.
The good thing about the American system of economics is that capitalism offers individuals a chance to make a lot of money. Doctors are one group of individuals who are able to do this. The problem that doctors may soon face though is they will not be able to make very much money because the state will take over and regulate the amount of money they can make. If the doctors cut their prices voluntarily, they may not have to deal with this and the cost of medical care will still go down. However, as health care costs rise and other agents find the need to become active in health policy decisions, we may begin to see the erosion of the dominance that health care providers, particularly physicians, have enjoyed for so long in these policy decisions. In order to prevent this, physicians must actively police their costs now.
In
conclusion, there are several ways to lower the cost of health care, but federal regulation and tax
increases are not the answer. Regulation should be through the state and the federal government should
give incentives. The best ways would be to group employees of small businesses, use federal government
incentives for the state, and utilize the competitive spirit in the members of the medical field. This
is an American problem and it calls for an American solution.