Complete 2 pages APA formatted article: Rising health care costs. Rising Healthcare Costs, Equity, and Electoral Success Constitute Trio of TensionsIan H. Kunkler http://www.jstor.org/stable/25459445

Complete 2 pages APA formatted article: Rising health care costs. Rising Healthcare Costs, Equity, and Electoral Success Constitute Trio of Tensions

Ian H. Kunkler

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25459445

All governments are seeking to find healthcare strategies that tackle the challenge of rising costs and patients' expectations while retaining popularity with their voters. Both UK and Australian governments have developed policies to reduce long waiting times in state funded hospitals.

In their analysis of the effects of increasing use of private insurance on the Australian healthcare system Hall and Maynard identify that the strategy of subsidising insurance premiums has been expensive but electorally successful. The UK government has chosen to buy increased capacity from the independent sector while not specifically encouraging individuals to take out private insurance.

An important downside of the Australian government's health policy, as Halland Maynard observe, is that it has differentially favoured rich people. In the United States, private medical insurance, the predominant vehicle for funding healthcare, has disadvantaged poor people. This is not the case in Canada, which has maintained a tax funded, universal healthcare system. A comparison with the United States showed no significant association between income inequality and mortality in Canada at provincial or metropolitan level.

In the United Kingdom there is evidence of a growing divide in cancer outcomes between rich and poor. The Australian experience may serve a timely caution to overdependence on the independent sector.

Ian H Kunkler consultant

Western General Hospital, Edinburgh EH4 2XU

ANALYSIS:

In this article, a global perspective is offered to touch on the rising health care costs. All governments are fighting their way to find an amicable solution to this menace and at the same time come up with a grand plan to maintain high standards of health care services. An overview of the United Kingdom and Australian governments is offered as the two states opt to find a pivotal balance to nail a healthier option of creating an equilibrium between Medicare services offered to the rich and the poor.

The author asserts that the Australian government keystone weakness is to deliberately favor the rich leaving the poor out of the best Medicare services equation. This is contrasted by the contemporaneous condition in the United States affirming that the Medicare private medical insurance, the predominant vehicle for funding healthcare, has disadvantaged poor people.

RESPONSE TO THE ARTICLE "Addressing Rising Health Care Costs — A View from the Congressional Budget Office."

It's profoundly clear that the long-term fiscal balance will ultimately rely on the future rate of growth of health care costs. As per the given Medicare and Medicaid costs threshold statistics, if the rates remain in the same continuum as the past few decades, overall federal costs incurred on those two programs will elevate from 5% to the stated 20% by 2050.

I strongly concur that the policymakers focus to simply compound this menace is the core impeding factor in controlling overall federal incurrence over the long run void of tabling an addressing the driving forces behind the elevated private and public health care costs. I strongly concur to different authors assertions that distribution of the health care costs throughout the economy does not necessarily solve the issue at hand, and that cost reduction strategy can be achieved void of compromising quality.

Also, the assertion of getting rid of financial incentives and ensuring that patients health care expenses are covered by their insurance providers is a key way to reduce overall health care costs.

Lastly, the overall insight to combine all possible cost saving options available is not only viable but also practical. Health care costs can be ultimately cut down by converging all the underlying options to ensure that patients are held on an elevated financial accountability on their insurance end.