According to the Associated Press, America spends on average $10,345 per person per year in America for health care, if that sounds outrageously high, keep in mind, that the average wage for individuals as reported by CNBC was just $44,569 for 2014. Further to the point, the Associated Press reports that for health care that: "…about 5 percent of the population….accounts for nearly half the spending in a given year. Meanwhile, half the population has little or no health care costs, accounting for 3 percent of spending." This sums up succulently everything that is wrong with our health care and its cost structure throughout America, in which the system not only is not very efficient in its money allocations, but apparently our health care infrastructure lives in some sort of idealistic world of not taking into consideration that time, monies spent and ultimately the billing of such, matters.
One of the fundamental problems with health care is the opacity of virtually everything that happens with patients when visiting a physician or while being admitted to a hospital. The patient typically doesn't really know what is going on, is powerless or too ill to do much about it, and in addition, is typically clueless about the cost of what is going on, and in particular, who pays for what. Additionally, health care should not be looked upon, as an unlimited bucket of services, that society, or insurance, or individuals, will just have to pay for, no matter the cost, no matter the reason, no matter much of anything.
While it is understandable, that people that are sick should desire to get well, if must also be stated, that ultimately, not every problem can be successfully mitigated or resolved, in addition to the rather inconvenient fact, that all physical matter must eventually die. This doesn’t mean that hospitals and doctors should be callous towards their patients, what it does mean, though, is that putting forth: "all the king's horses and all the king's men" is often neither the prudent nor effective course of action.
Additionally, individuals, more than any other entity, must have skin in their own health care game. That is to say that the decisions, activities, and things that people do on an everyday basis with their body and mind, most definitely has an effect upon their overall health and therefore insurance companies, governmental bureaucracies, and employers, should incentivize people to make good lifetime choices, as this pays off in the short as well as over the long term. Then there are those, typically the very young, as well as the very old, whose health, needs significant medical attention, which should be provided, but within a prism in which cost, equipment, and manpower are considered in conjunction with each other.
So too, fingers must be pointed at the entire health care system, as to why, with so much monies spent, America accomplishes far less than what it ought to for its people. This would imply strongly that the system as currently structured and managed is widely inefficient and based on results, not all that effective, either. This would indicate that from the very top on down, the heath care infrastructure must be reconfigured, re-imagined, and redone. Health care in America isn't working very well, and it thereby needs a very significant makeover, and in order to do so, America must demonstrate in action the urgency and wisdom to effect the necessary changes required for this country and for its people that deserve no less.