Influence on Health Care Providers

Influences on Providers

Kevin Melick

HCM 300 H2WW

April 19, 2012

Unemployed Individuals

Unemployment in the United States is a number that represents the most current workforce in the country that is not working; it affects the healthcare industry through insurance premiums and raising costs to pay for uninsured workers. In fact United Health Groups says that maintaining strong earnings will only be accomplished by raising premiums because they have exhausted other methods such as staffing cuts (Wikinvest, 2012). Revenues and margins for net profit have significantly dropped off because of the recession that left nearly 7 million people unemployed. If you couple this figure with the ever continuing rising cost of healthcare and that American businesses are paying about 9% more for healthcare insurance for their workers partially due to less paying customers in the system, the picture is not sunny but overcast as far as profits are concerned.

Under and Uninsured

One major issue with the uninsured is how they access our healthcare system and why they are forced to use the system the way they do because they have no health coverage. They are forced to use emergency rooms as their primary care which is expensive and many times they postpone care, delay tests and skip prescription medications because they cannot afford to purchase them. (Mokrohisky & Logan, 2005). By not having access to preventative healthcare the uninsured are driving up costs because those insured and government programs are burdened with paying the bill for the more expensive type of patient care. Simply put, the business sense of how to run a healthcare system is in place and they realize how to lower costs through pre-screening, outreach programs and continuing care for chronic conditions but the political system has not went far enough down that road yet.

Local Economy

As costs for healthcare spiral upward the amount of money that can be spent elsewhere declines. In 2009 17.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GNP) in the United States was spent on healthcare, which is up from 13.8% in the year 2000 and an astounding 5.2% in 1960. On the local economy and in the short run the single hospital towns have experienced employment growth, but as programs continue to be cut their positions will disappear as well (Johnson, 2009). Eventually the cost shifting that is taking place will drive healthcare costs higher and higher and strangle small local business out and the local healthcare services as well. In the smaller communities