Controlling Health Costs

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, managed care and cost controls that have been utilized to lower healthcare costs. The paper argues that in order to achieve improved performance, the US needs to implement more effective strategies to measure health outcomes, ensure a higher degree of price sensitivity among purchasers and correct its administrative efficiencies. The paper maintains that the focus of legislators needs to be upon health as a value and on health priorities rather than on fragmented strategies for controlling healthcare costs. The paper includes graphs of Medicare and Medicaid statistics.

From the Paper:

"The central problem with the US healthcare system appears to be related to perspective. Efforts to control costs have predominated over the delivery of quality health care. The goal of limiting government and private expenditures for health care while improving health outcomes results in health care productivity being a significant policy issue not only in the United States but across the globe. Although productivity is only one aspect of the performance of any health care system, improvements in productivity can make it easier to achieve other health system goals, such as greater access to care and protection from the financial losses resulting from ill health. Ever since the mid-1970s, the US healthcare system has been troubled with three major concerns: quality, costs and access (Odom & Garcia, 2005)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Baily, M. & Garber, A. (1997). Health care productivity. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 143-203.
• Dracup, K. (2003). The United States healthcare crisis. American Journal of Critical Care, 12 (4), 306-311.
• Odom, L. & Garcia, A. (2005). The ethics of capping non-economic damages to control rising healthcare costs. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 18, (4/5), R1-R11.
• Ullmann, S. (2003). Out of our crisis. Hospital Topics, 81 (2). 4-7.

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