Chapter 2
Introduction
Even though healthcare spending in the United States is among the highest globally, the country’s performance in most categories is lagging. The US has a high-quality score for patient-centered treatment, but it has a poor score for safe and coordinated care. According to new research from Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die each year due to medical mistakes. This is the third most significant cause of mortality in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer, accounting for 10% of fatalities. The United States healthcare system is plagued by fraud and cover-ups. Policyholders are caught amid an arms race between service providers and insurers when it comes to upcoming. Providers can “upcode” treatment to collect more payments from health insurers, but insurance may raise rates for businesses and reduce costs to consumers as a result. Consumers are left in the middle, unable to influence health outcomes and prices. Patients cannot quickly locate a decent doctor because of a lack of readily available information about medical qualifications and achievements. Consumers rely on uninformed online reviews to identify factors like the friendliness of the workers and the duration of the wait. The issue is that the systems do not provide information, such as information on health disorders that consumers may be experiencing, the appropriate physicians capable of treating such illnesses, and how to assess a physician’s competence level in assisting people with their health ailments.
The Health Cost Institute’s annual research shows that typical healthcare expenses have risen year over year, with 2018 rates 15% more than in 2014. Ten percent of GDP was spent on healthcare in the United States in 2018, and this figure has steadily increased over the years. According to the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary, national healthcare expenditure in the United States is predicted to outperform GDP growth (avg. annual growth rate of 4.3 percent) until 2023. Over the next decade, spending is expected to rise to $6.19 trillion, accounting for 19.7 % of GDP.