Annual Per Capita Healthcare Costs By Age Essay

The unify States has way higher healthc ar costs than some(prenominal) other commonwealth in the OECD, mostly which is because of the extremely high expenses later in life. 17 cents of e very(prenominal) US dollar is being spent on health c be. At about come on 60, health tuition expenses for US citizens skyrocket, averaging between $40,000 to $45,000 a year per person, which is way above Germany, who has the next highest with only about $10,000.Dr. Ficshbeck, an engineering professor who runs a website c wholeed lastriskrankings.com, says the high costs are not totally without some reward. He said when it comes to deaths caused by disorder, men from the US urinate a survival advantage over men from western atomic proceeds 63 starting around age 65 that steadily increases over age. the Statesn women collapse this same advantage starting around age 80. This message if Americans died from diseases at the same rove as hatful from the Netherlands, for example, in that res pect would be about 60,000 more male deaths and 14,000 more female deaths in the US, all after the age of 70. France is among the few exceptions because they have a lower death judge from disease, but for the most part, the United States has a lower rate of diseased-caused deaths than Western Europe.Dr. Ficshbecks research also shows evidence that Americans have a higher death rate during young adulthood and middle age mainly due to health. Obesity rates, which are i of the laming causes of fiber 2 diabetes, are 3 times higher in America than France, and more than twice as high as in Germany. This body of work could mean that American healthcare is not totally at breach for not producing better results, but the American people themselves should be to cull for not making better health choices earlier in there lives. Ficshbeck believes that the edge the United States is getting in the latter years are due to our superior screening and treatment of diseases, the most prominent one being cancer. Americans have an average 5 year survival rate for breast cancer. This is higher than any other country in the OECD.Although Americans have a small advantage when it comes to death rates caused by disease for people over the age of 70, it isnt a big generous advantage to prove that all of the money we spend on of age(p) Americans healthcare is providing that some(prenominal) of a survival advantage. A Boston University economist by the name of Dr. Lawrence Kotlikoff believes that the fuss with our healthcare overexpense problem stems from Medicare. He says the system has no cost match, and that pretty much any services that hospitals or doctors provide, Medicare will pay for. He has a very interesting idea for an alternative system that will provide inducement for practicing healthy habits (which the lack of proves to be one of main reasons for our not-so-superior life foreboding rates) and also lower US healthcare spending. He advocates issuing everybody vo uchers through with(predicate) health insurance companies that would vary in value depending on the telephone receivers health status, kind of like how car insurance companies are run.This sounds like a great alternative in that it would give people a good reason to be healthy which, in turn, would lead to less money being spent on expensive tests and procedures. Robert Martensen, theatre director of the office history at the National Institutes of Health is skeptical of how much of the United States health care spending is actually going towards increase lifespan. He says that 40 to 50 percent of Medicare is being spent on intensive care which whitethorn not necessarily increase their chances of survival. European countries spend a lot less after the age of 65 mainly due to the fact that they have a lot more general practitioners, fewer specialists, and more centralized control over the number of hospital beds.Another researcher, named Dr. Jonathan Skinner, believes that althoug h the US may be spending alike much on older peoples health care, Europeans may also be doing too little. Having a specialist for every reed organ in the body of a patient with a chronic indisposition is a big part of the reason Americans are overspending. A remuneration technique called bundling could be a solution to this problem. It suggests that doctors and hospitals be pay a set amount for each patient diagnosis, such as diabetes or heart failure, and then have the ability to be rewarded with spare payments for meeting certain standards for quality care.This will give the doctors more control on what they should be spending their money on, so if they deem it unnecessary, they wint have to waste money on specialized care for a patient. The problem with bundling and the reason many physicians are against the idea, is that a doctor cant always know ahead of time if they shouldnt spend money on a patient. Although the US is spending way too much on Medicare, thats not a deci sion any doctor wants to be in control of.