How Consumers are Disrupting Healthcare: Discuss the Ways to Stop This
During the 37th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that happened in the end of January of 2019, spokesmen raised a very interesting question – How Consumers are Disrupting Healthcare? Surely, the talk was mostly about the U.S. healthcare system but the issues brought there were true to any state medical program. Consumers who are the receiving end of the healthcare services significantly impact on the formation of prices, development of new drugs and even professionalism of medical staff.
How is it related? Suppose, a person gets sick and needs medications to feel better. He or she doesn’t use the days-off to treat – in most cases, people just swallow a few pills and forget about their disorder. Because going to a doctor is too expensive and time-wasting. You see, people do not trust doctors as they used to do. JP Morgan experts are trying to solve this problem and help people believe in healthcare.
What problems are the most disturbing for U.S. consumers?
Medicine is accepted as a business. Many people who are related to the medical niche in the United States know the phrase: “Medicine is a business of saving lives”. The keyword is “business” here and this terrifies people. The basic principle in the US, according to which the doctor works, is “cost effectiveness”. That is how an average U.S doctor thinks: what is more profitable is to do the analysis now or when will the problems begin?
The U.S. healthcare industry is a multi-billion dollar business that is much larger than military niche. Accordingly, many players in this business achieve profitable regulations or rules. For example, the pharmaceutical industry is seeking a law that prohibits buying the same drugs in Canada at 50% cheaper and prescribing to buy these drugs at full price in the United States.
Insurance plans are not affordable to everyone. In the US, about 30 million people do not have health insurance. The problem with the lack of such insurance is that one way or another, medical care is periodically needed for everyone. And don’t even let us talk about emergency cases when the ambulance is required.
If a person is conscious he or she would prefer to call a taxi or ask the relatives to take him or her to the emergency room, because using the ambulance transportation is very expensive. Even with good medical insurance, you will pay for this ambulance call for another year.
And what is there is no insurance? An appendectomy without insurance in the most ordinary hospital costs up to $10,000. In the USA there are common the cases of bankruptcy due to the exorbitant medical bills.
Another item of expenditure relates to the fact that most drugs are sold only on prescription. Any visit to the doctor always means spending money and then buy medications as well which are not covered fully with any medical insurance.
The cost of medical insurance against a counterclaim (meaning insurance that every doctor should have in case of a claim from the patient or his family. – Ed.) In most states is very high. This is due to the influence of lawyers that prevent the passage of a law in Congress, which limits the payment of claims to reasonable limits. Many lawyers who specialize in this problem throughout the country and they are prominent donors.
Doctors continue to prescribe thousands of tests that are not always needed and only cover the doctor if the prosecution attorney asks why this test was not been appointed before. There is a popular joke: it’s easier to sue your doctor and win a case than to win the lottery in the United States.
So, instead of asking how consumers are disrupting the healthcare system in the United States of America, maybe it is better to ask how the healthcare can improve to let people trust doctors, cut their medical expenses and believe in quality medications offered in clinics.
