7 week sys chad: support the argument
Healthcare continues to be a big expense for the citizens and the government of the United States. In the year 2017 the spending on healthcare grew 3.9% reaching a cost of approximately $3.5 trillion or $10,739 per person (Historical, 2018). This translates to healthcare accounting for about 17.9% of our Gross Domestic Product (Historical, 2018). (2) The United States spends more per person on healthcare than any other country, by a considerable amount. When compared to other countries with similarities the US spends almost twice the comparable country average (Sawyer & Cox, 2018). The next closest, of this group of countries, is Switzerland at about $8k, or 12% of GDP, and the lowest is the United Kingdom at $4k, or 10% of GDP (Sawyer & Cox, 2018). (3) The biggest things that the healthcare money goes to is private health insurance at almost $1.2 trillion, which is about 34% of national healthcare expenditure (NHE Fact Sheets, 2019). The next few things are hospital expenditure ($1.1 trillion), Medicare ($706 billion), physician and clinical services ($694 billion), Medicaid ($582 billion), out of pocket spending ($366 billion), and prescription drugs ($333 billion) (NHE Fact Sheets, 2019). (4) It seems with how things are run now the things that are easiest to cut get cut and then things that are for groups that can’t or won’t stand up for themselves get cut as well. According to an article I found the proposed budget cuts for next year’s budget include things such as cuts to Social Security Disability program, Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs (Capps, 2019). I would also suspect that community programs and wellness or health promotion programs would be cut in order to make room for more budget towards the things that take up the larger portions of the healthcare budget. References Capps, K. (2019). The Brutal Austerity of Trump’s Huge 2020 Budget. Retrieved from https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/trumps-2020-budget-cuts-social-security- medicare-food-stamps/584440/ References Capps, K. (2019). The Brutal Austerity of Trump’s Huge 2020 Budget. Retrieved from https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/trumps-2020-budget-cuts-social-security- medicare-food-stamps/584440/ Historical. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and- systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/ nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html NHE Fact Sheets. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and- systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html Sawyer, B. & Cox, C. (2018). How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries? Retrieved from https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health- spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-recent-years-health-spending-growth-slowed-u-s- comparable-countries
