How are we not spending too much on healthcare?!?!

One of the main opinions that I keep hearing in repetition is that the US has good health care and that is why our country's annual medical bill is so expensive. Unfortunately, that is a falsehood spoken with a strong bias. We do not have a good health care system or everyone would be covered. If a private citizen can afford to pay for health care or they are given it by an employer then, yes, the coverage usually is very good. However, there is a large percentage of our citizens who do not get those benefits.

What really stood out to me between the two articles is that even though but writers are taking different opinions on whether the US spends too much on healthcare or not, they still were able to make a fairly long and overlapping laundry list of wasteful spending contributors in our health care system.

Unfortunately, a lot of these contributors are part of our broken fragmented circle of health in this country. For example, David Brown of the Washington Post said that this year we will spend approximately $93 billion on the treatment of coronary heart disease. He states that this is worth the money to treat this many people. However, wouldn't it be more effective to stage primary care interventions encouraging people to change their diets and exercise routines, etc. Wouldn't it save billions in the long run to fund prevention instead of just throwing expensive surgeries and medications at the problem?

Also, in Parija Kavilanz's article from CNNMoney.com, it is stated that a few of the overspending problems come from ERs being used as primary care clinics and hospital readmittance because of patients being discharged too early. Both of these problems could be solved with a better insurance and healthcare system. The lack of insurance or insurance coverage is determining whether these people get to see primary care physicians or if they can stay long enough to heal in the hospital!

Between the two authors I noted them both saying that contributors to our overspending were: inappropriate care, defensive medicine and over testing, high administration costs, inflated prices, fraud, processing claims, ignoring doctor's orders, ineffective use of technology, hospital readmission, medical errors, unnecessary ER visits, and hospital acquired infections. In my opinion, no matter how you feel about our healthcare spending, I can not see how someone could look at the list of contributors and say we are not spending too much. I definitely think we are.