How Much to Spend on Medical Care? Research Paper Example

A major issue that every healthcare professional must face is whether money should be spent based upon how sick people are or how much is available. While we all ethically believe that money should be spent based on how sick people are, this is not realistically how the real world works. Insurances companies have found ways to define people’s sickness, and often offer limited number of visits to the patient regardless of their health state or specific needs. Furthermore, for many serious illnesses, we observe that the cost of treatment rises with the cost of severity. An excellent example of this is in patients who are terminally ill with cancer. Certain cancers, such as non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), have very few treatment options are available, but the goal of the healthcare professional is still to prolong the life of the patient. Unfortunately, a course of chemotherapy for this type of patient averages about $100,000 a year. Frequently, this cost is not covered in fully by health insurance agencies and the patient must pay out of pocket. On occasion, people without insurance are unable to pay this price at all, and are not able to undergo treatment that is equivalent to those with insurance.

It is sad that we associate the value of life with the amount of money that insurance or the patient has available, but this is the reality of the medical world. Cancer therapeutics are extremely expensive to develop and the high prices are often the way that pharmaceutical companies are able to break even (Levy, 2013). In order to help patients who are very sick and require expensive medications, it is important to restructure the hospital or healthcare facilities in ways that are maximally cost effective. This way, it may be possible to use spare money to help the individual out. A useful solution would to be to use this money to hire social workers to determine whether the individuals qualify for government funded insurance (Wallace, 2012).

References

Levy, AR. (2013). The Sky-High Price of Chemotherapy: Why Do Cancer Drugs Cost So Much? Takepart. Retrieved from http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/09/cost-of-chemotherapy

Wallace, Gregory. (2012). ‘Obamacare’: The word that defined the health care debate. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/25/politics/obamacare-word- debate/index.html?_s=PM:POLITICS