Introduction
America’s healthcare system is broken. Due to our use of a third-party payer system, doctors struggle to afford the proper insurance and consumers struggle to receive quality care. Routine doctor’s visits, essential surgeries, and emergency visits are extremely expensive and unaffordable for the average American. 13% of G.D.P is spent on healthcare with the government or insurance covering most costs. However, because the doctor is not motivated by the competition of the consumer than the doctor lacks motivation to provide good consumer care leading to a multitude of other issues. In addition, Americans do not save enough money to provide for healthcare costs when they arise leading to issues like bankruptcy and more. In comparison, Singapore lacks many of these issues and their healthcare is superb. Using this country as an example, how can we improve our healthcare system for the public?
The Broken Health Care System
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Our health care system is far less efficient and less quality than it should be and most of this is because doctors are not paid directly by the consumer but rather by the insurance companies leading to the doctor not being motivated to treat the consumer well. In Singapore, there is no third-party payment system so doctors directly compete for the business of the consumer lowering prices and increasing the quality care of the patient because they want their business again. While here in the United States, the doctor is paid by the government and insurance companies. Because of this, the consumer often does not know the full price of the doctor’s visits due to the haggling between the doctor and the insurance company until after the visit has taken place. This, however, leads to a lack of competition because the price is never directly advertised so consumers never know how much they can truly expect to pay. This also makes it difficult for the consumer to budget properly to ensure they are picking the route of care they can afford. Additionally, it inhibits the free enterprise system because doctors are not rewarded for inventing, providing the best patient care, and more. Moreover, people will never save enough money to cover their medical costs, especially with something catastrophic occurs, if they are diagnosed with a disease that requires a lot of care, or if they require surgery. This leads many Americans to be unable to afford the cost of the medical care they require leading them to debt and bad circumstances. Even though the government offers health care savings plans, people will often choose to use the money for something they need at that moment in time so when they have a medical emergency, they cannot afford the cost. Our health care system is inefficient but through some modifications could be improved for both the consumer and the doctor.
Potential Modifications
The Singapore healthcare system has a couple of unique solutions that may benefit our own system if applied correctly. In the USA we use a third-party payment system discussed above, while in Singapore they compete for everything. Prices are directly presented to the consumer and the consumer causes these to make an informed decision. Therefore, doctors are more motivated to provide the best patient care and provide competitive pricing. This pushes their healthcare further and encourages innovation. Singapore also has a mandatory healthcare savings account for 7% of your income goes into this account where it continuously grows. By the time people hit retirement age and their bodies begin to decline, they typically have plenty of savings to provide for their rising medical costs because of the long-term savings they have gained. In the USA, we are not encouraged to prepare for our future medical costs. Therefore, people save very little and then they cannot provide for their medical bills when disaster strikes. However, in the USA people would not be open to the idea of mandatory savings. An idea that could potentially work, is having a set amount of money gifted to you by Congress or your insurance company a month to provide for your medical bills based off of your age, health care needs, and more and then you as the consumer get to choose how to spend this money and then the rest is gifted to you at the end of the month. This gives consumers motivation to choose lower paying options for lower medical emergencies because they want to keep this money. It is also wise for consumers to have some skin in the game in order that they will choose to be more conscious with their spending choices overall. This plan would be both viable for those in a low income and high-income brackets and would begin to incentivize doctors to be more competitive in their field. Singapore also has the best safety net in the world for those for true disaster strikes like a rare cancer. Singapore sets a specific amount of money aside a year (where politicians cannot touch) and then people desperately needing medical assistance like chemotherapy and more can fill out this form stating their need and if it is granted (which it usually is) then this fund will cover their medical bills and they are treated the same as any other consumer. A fund like this would provide people with the assurance of a safety net giving them more confidence in the system. The United States could adopt a few of Singapore’s ideas to help fix our healthcare system.
Conclusion
Our healthcare system needs to be adjusted for both the betterment of the doctors and the betterment of the patients. My own experience with the health care system occurred after a serious car accident left me with a deep head laceration which required me to be care flighted to OKC with medical bills and unaffordable deductibles that I was responsible for. The insurance companies of the people in both cars, since I was a passenger, took care of most of the payment, but this process was very lengthy and confusing, leaving me having no idea how much I would have to pay. I needed emergency treatment, and I could have gained serious debt because of the incident. While I am thankful to not be worse off, it has shed so much light on how our healthcare system needs to be adjusted for the betterment of our society.