Consider the problem of rising health care costs and the current health care crisis. Offer some possible solutions. How is this an ethical issue?
Below is a Sample Solution.
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Rising health care costs are a major ethical issue as they contribute to inequalities with respect to healthcare access. The fact that the UN as well as every most developed nations recognize that access to healthcare is a universal right further illustrates how ethically damming it is to see the disparity in access to health care that can occur due to rising costs. A major problem with the U.S. healthcare system is that they are spending over three trillion dollars, and way more of their GDP than any other country in the world on healthcare, and yet are not achieving better results. The system is filled with inefficiencies and issues such as accurate measurement of costs. Another solution may be to adopt a universal health care system like every other developed nation. The issue here is this would require a total retooling of the entire healthcare system, which would present significant challenges. Many argue that physician salaries are too high and that cost of healthcare services are growing faster than other goods in the economy. By observing the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the past 20 years, it can be seen that this is true with medical care growing 1.4% faster per year than average consumer goods.
At the end of the day, for costs to stop rising so quickly, the healthcare system has to stop spending money in such an inefficient manner. By comparing the United States to other nations it is very clear that there are intrinsic issues with spending within the system that need to be addressed in order to eliminate the disparity to health access that is being observed.
References
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical
https://hbr.org/2011/09/how-to-solve-the-cost-crisis-in-health-care
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2020/04/why-are-americans-paying-more-for-healthcare