The Health Care Crisis

America is facing one of the worst healthcare crisis. Costs are raising at greater then 10% a year for the last couple of years. That is almost three times the current inflation rate. Also the cost of health insurance has kept pace with the rise of the healthcare costs. Employers are pushing the burden health insurance onto employees. Add to this the 47 million un-insured, the retiring baby boomers who are going to be using cost strapped Medicare more and more and the scores of under insured. All these are symptoms of a crisis which is getting worse by the day without any signs of a recovery in the near future.
Looking at these issues might spur any country into action to fix these issues. But when the top most leadership of this country says “I mean, people have access to health care in America,”. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” This is what the President said on July 11th in Cleveland. This just shows a basic lack of understanding of the issues at hand from top down. As for the emergency room(ER), I can tell you as an insider who has worked for the last three years on patient throughput issues in the ER, there is a nationwide over-crowding of ER's on a daily basis, and costs for an ER visits are exorbitant compared to a regular physician visit.
So what is the solution for all of the ill's that ail the healthcare. For one thing it might not be such a bad idea to look at the healthcare delivery and administration in other developed countries and adopt some of the best practices there. Thinking about ways to eliminate waste and unnecessary paper work that plague the hospitals as well as insurance companies would be a step in the right direction. As for addressing the issues of the un-insured, looking to provide some sort of universal coverage for all should be a considered.