Will Reforming the Medical Liability System Improve Health Care and Lower Health Care Costs?

Abstract

Learning the history of health care reform shows us why health care is failing, how Medical Liability is making health care expensive, the costs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and other countries that have universal health care.

Will Reforming The Medical Liability System Improve Health Care and Lower Health Care Costs?

Many things raise the cost of health insurance. Insurance premiums, prescription drugs, costly test by doctors to prevent litigation, a shift to for-profit healthcare providers and high administrative costs have increased the cost of health care in the United States. From 1960 to 2006, health care spending as a percentage of the national GDP has risen from a little over four percent to around fourteen percent. Our US population has continued to grow but the number of people that have health insurance has decreased. Many people cannot afford insurance so they overwhelm many emergency rooms to receive treatment. Another cost to the government for health care is the employer-sponsored insurance where the employer gives the employee a tax-free benefit and is able to deduct the cost of this health insurance off the business taxes. Many of the people that are uninsured do not get treatment until it is almost too late. Therefore, their treatment is more expensive than if they were treated when they first saw signs of illness. Looking at the history of health care reform, we can see the problems with health care today and how quickly health care expenses have risen.

Looking at the history of health care cost, we find that the first cost was $.50 a month. In 1929, several teachers came to Baylor Hospital in Dallas for treatment and were unable to pay for their treatments. Justin Kimball, the administrator started a fund where any teacher that enrolled in this program for $.50 a month would receive treatments and the payment would come out of this fund. This fund later became Blue Cross/Blue Shield healthcare. From 1933 thru 1993, President Franklin, President Truman, President Lyndon Johnson, President Nixon, President Clinton and Hillary Clinton created health care reform plans but these were rejected. “On March 23, 2010, President Obama passed health care reform into law.” (Health care reform, 2010) This new Health care reform bill contains cost-control measures, Federal subsidies, no co-pays, employer mandates, expansion of Medicaid, private insurance regulations and taxes on health care plans that costs exceed $8500 for individuals and $23,000 for families.

One of the reasons health care is expensive is because the money is spent on services that do not help improve Americans’ health. The ABC blog about health care titled, “The U.S. health care system wasted $750 billion on unnecessary and overpriced medical tests and treatments, administrative fees,