Health care spending in the U.S.

It’s hard to turn on the evening news or a cable news network this week and not hear something concerning President Obama’s health-care reform.
There are strong opinions on either side of the issue, but the fact still remains that something needs to be done to correct the amount of money the U.S. spends medicine.
Health care represented 17 percent of this country’s gross domestic product in 2007, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. That was $2.4 trillion or $7,900 per person.
In 2008, health expenditures were expected to rise twice the rate of inflation, the coalition said.
Is that not a problem?
Forget about covering the millions of uninsured in this country. The U.S. needs a paradigm shift on its attitudes toward health care spending.
Jamie Orlikoff, a leading health care consultant, spoke at Baptist St. Anthony’s Hospital in late November and gave a powerful talk on the problems facing U.S. health care.
That night, he likened the U.S. spending on health care to the Soviet’s spending on its military.
“Health care is bankrupting the economy,” Orlikoff told select medical, civic and hospital leaders. “We’re spending too much on health care.”
Orlikoff threw some sobering statistics at the crowd:

• In 2006, U.S. spending on health care would have created the third-largest economy in the world.


• By 2015, nearly 1 of every 5 dollars spent in the U.S. will be on health care.


• While fighting two wars in the Middle East, the U.S. still spends four times more on health care than the military.


• The Medicare program will be bankrupt in the next decade, government reports say if nothing is done to correct the program.

I read one op-ed piece this morning that stated, “Is it a problem that the United States has almost four times as many MRI scanners per capita as Canada does?”
Yes. Depending on how often they are used in individual communities.
If you have a dozen MRI machines in a square mile and each is only use sparingly, then why force consumers to pay for a multi-million dollar MRI machine when offices could consolidate their use?
It flies in the face of reason, but in health care, bigger is not always better and the newest, most advanced technology is not always needed for quality health care.