Question

Hospitals and other health care institutions, whether voluntary or for-profit, need to be financially solvent to survive growing market pressures. Describe how this "bottom line" focus has changed the nature of the US health care system.

Answer 1

In the healthcare system of United States, the focus on “paying the bills” and making profits did not change, but the way how and when the bills are being paid has changed. The HMO involvement in the healthcare system is increasing constantly and the overall cash flow had reduced considerably, causing a great strain on everyone. Insurance, whether private, or government based are in control of the type of care, how much care, the amount paid for care, and when this payment is made. The number of people getting care is increasing daily as well as the number of these people who do not or cannot pay for these services. In our system no one can be denied care, citizen or not, money or not, insurance or not. This alone has caused a major problem, and is growing! Even if our national economy had no problems, unless care cost and payment of this cost improved, the problems would still grow. Government-controlled health-care would assure these problems to increase bigger, faster and care would be reduced. Government control of anything is a guarantee of inefficiency corruption and mismanagement.

Probably the most visible change is found in two places. The medical schools and in the clinics and hospitals themselves. Medical schools are seeing a drastic drop in the number of people who seek to be physicians because they see that medicine has become more about the bottom line than actually helping people. And frankly, there are easier ways to make money. In the hospitals and clinics, we see a tendency toward waiting for health services. The doctors that are in practice today are almost forced to see one patient every ten minutes or so in order to keep the hospital or clinic solvent as you say. This is our fault...not theirs. People here in the U.S. have gotten accustomed to having available to them every diagnostic procedure and specialty in the world. MRI machines, for example, are found in nearly every hospital. Even in small towns. In contrast, Moscow, Russia had only 5 MRI machines available to its ten million residents a few years ago. The same thing holds true for other countries with socialized medicine. Cutting the costs to the hospitals and clinics by patients demanding less is really the only way to curb the high costs of medicine in this country. We will get what we are willing to pay for.