I have been working as a nurse in one of the hospitals in Illinois for a long time. The US healthcare system has a pluralistic character, expressed in the absence of single centralized management and numerous types of medical institutions. For several categories of citizens treated for free, expenses are compensated by the state or special funds. Many economists are concerned that so much of the gross domestic product is spent on healthcare. After all, if so much money is spent on medical services, less is left for housing, food, clothing, and other vital goods and services.
The Medicaid program, designed to help people with low incomes, is funded by the federal government and the state level. Since each state has its own Medicaid program, this creates significant difficulties in public administration (Matters et al., 2020). To use Medicaid services, it is necessary to prove that this person’s financial situation is below a certain level. Under this program, 5 services are provided: inpatient and outpatient treatment, consultations with various specialists, stay in nursing homes, laboratory diagnostics, and radiological research methods (Looi et al., 2021). Medicare is aimed at helping people over the age of 65 and citizens of pre-retirement age who have health problems. The sources of financing are payroll tax, progressive income tax, and corporate income tax.
Over the past 30 years, healthcare costs have increased disproportionately in America, although there were no objective prerequisites to improve the quality of services. Over the past decade, the cost of insurance for one employee has more than doubled. A significant part of the population remains uninsured, and the proportion of such people is growing (Jankowski et al., 2021). The insurance market provided by employers is extremely monopolized, which hinders the mobility of labor resources and creates conditions for discrimination of patients both before and after the conclusion of an insurance contract.
My opinion is that the current medical system is characterized by unresolved interaction between the public and private sectors of the economy. Even though the state allocates huge sums to the industry, it does not have effective levers to control the prices and costs of services and drugs. As a result, medicine that is almost completely given into private hands, although it meets American ideals, turns out to be prohibitively expensive.