1. The United States has the highest health care costs of any industrialized country, but falls far behind in quality of care as measured by life expectancy, infant mortality, annual reported deaths due to medical errors, and the high number of preventable deaths.
2. We also trail other countries when it comes to patient satisfaction and preventive health care.
3. Although the US spends more on health care, more than 46 million Americans are not insured and another 25 million are underinsured. The burden of covering the costs of health care for these two groups is shifted to state Medicaid programs, employer-provided health care and individual policy holders.
4. AND...Health care costs increased more than 7.8% last year, 2% more than the GDP, and currently exceed $2.2 trillion. Home health care and prescription drug costs have increased at a higher rate than other health care costs. .It is estimated that if costs are not contained they will take up 19.5% of the GDP by 2017.
Because of the dilemma of high costs and apparent uneven or low quality of care, health care reform has become a hotly debated topic. There is general agreement that something needs to change, but there is little agreement on what those changes should be. In the past, efforts to reform health care have failed because of the economic interests of the providers and confusion on the part of users.
The current system is complex and costly and any change will require an informed and demanding public.
TO READ MORE, YOU CAN ACCESS THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF ARIZONA'S INFORMATIONAL HANDBOOK, "HEALTH CARE ISSUES BEHIND HEALTH CARE REFORM" AT http://www.lwvaz.org.
© Copyright
League of Women Voters of Sedona-Verde Valley, Arizona. All rights reserved.
![[LWV]](images/lwv76.gif)
