Do higher costs and expenditures for care
reflect higher quality of care?
As a child, I was left with my sister who at some point watched the show “I did not know I was pregnant” and I was terrified how dozens of women would suffer from crucial pain but never went to the doctor’s. And of course, I remember my parents striving to pay all the bills and medical insurance (which not always happened) and their fear to go to the hospital because they would never pay the bills even for simple examinations. The whole absurd situation makes me think whether the health care system in the USA – one of the most developed countries in the world – operates correctly, because, obviously, high costs for medical services make people literally afraid to sneeze and cross the doctor’s threshold. This leaves some symptoms unnoticed and illnesses uncured. And as we all know prevention or even timely visit to the hospital can save human’s life – the highest value of modern society.
We often encounter two totally opposite situations, where the doctors would prescribe unnecessary expensive procedures and drugs on one hand, and when patients misuse availability of the valuable examination methods just because they can on the other (Drexler, 2010). This ultimately leads to the rising costs of health care and makes the gap between medical care and modest people even bigger than it already is.
In the article “Health care spending, quality, and outcomes: more isn’t always better” its authors discuss problem of the health care access on example of Massachusetts: the state reported the highest expenseс on medicine but people would complain even more about the quality of the services provided (Fisher et al., 2009). The reason behind that is the way doctors manage their time (referring patients to the specialists even if they can handle them without external help) and how they chose patients (preferring current patients whose illnesses are already well-known and are easier to cure to the new patients). Obviously, we can not blame health care specialists for adapting to the reality but should we ignore poor quality and troublesome access to medical care?
The abovementioned points prove that medical care provided to the patients not necessarily benefits from high expenses. Actually, it only makes us question whether received from insurances money is economically justified and wisely divided. However, as consumers of medical services we should take into consideration that some procedures are simply more effective, some illnesses are cured better and quicker just because of the high achievements in some particular spheres. Anyway, when struggling with a medical problem expenses are usually inevitable, so, no point in arguing too much as health maintenance will not become free.
References
Drexler M. (2010). Can cost-effective health care = better health care? Harvard public health. Retrieved from http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/winter10assessment/
Fisher E., Goodman D., Skinner J., Bronner K. (27 Feb. 2009). Health care spending, quality, and outcomes: more isn’t always better. Dartmouth Atlas. Retrieved from http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/downloads/reports/Spending_Brief_022709.pdf
