Money and Medicine (Essay Sample)

Money and Medicine
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Increased health care spending has been a growing trend in many countries over the last few decades. Some of the crucial underlying factors for the ever rising per capita health spending in the recent decades have been the emergence, adoption, and widespread diffusion of modern technology that is being applied in the field of health and medicine. According Aaron and Ginsburg (2009), major technological advancements in the field of medicine have allowed health providers to easily diagnose and treat diseases using methods that had proved impossible in previous years. Many of these innovations rely on very expensive new drugs, equipment, and skills, among other factors (Aaron & Ginsburg, 2009). Other innovations, however, are quite inexpensive. But the costs of these drugs and equipment add up quickly as growing number of providers and patients use them. Therefore, as per capita expenditure on health care increases, there are high chances that the cost of drugs and medication will increase drastically. Even though technological developments play a key role as far as reducing the cost of drugs is concerned, such medical developments and other changes in clinical practice to some extent tend to contribute a lot in increasing health care spending.
When per capita health spending keeps on increasing, there are high chances of neglecting other sectors such income security, housing, and education. As noted before, increased health care spending is attributed to a rise in pre capita income. However, per capita income cannot be used as the only factor attributed to the ever increasing health care spending in both developed and developing nations (Aaron & Ginsburg, 2009). When health care spending increases, possibilities of this spending leveling the nation’s per capita income cannot be ruled out.
That not being enough, increased health spending may have a negative impact on the growing share of a country’s national income. In other words, an increase in health care spending can grow at a faster rate than the national income. However, excess heath care spending, which can be assumed as the growing gap separating income and spending, is determined by the growing rate of income and health care spending. Normally, the two tend to vary widely. Furthermore, increased health care spending is projected to claim a nation’s income in future. With the increasing aging population in many countries, there have been emphases to increase health care spending for this population. Even though the impact of increasing health care spending for the aging population may not be felt in the short run, increasing this spending may end up being financial burden to the government (Aaron & Ginsburg, 2009). Additionally, it is alleged that a third of the excess health care spending goes to waste. Individuals who spend most of their money on medication may end up spending more than what is expected.
Furthermore, overdiagnosis and overtreatment is quite dangerous to any patient. In the same way underdiagnosis and undertreatment are dangerous, so is overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Overdiagnosis is always associated with taking a patient through many tests for different diseases thus making a patient even sicker in pursuit of health when a disease does not really exist. On the other hand, overtreatment subjects a patient to treatments for the same disease. For example, subjecting an expectant mother to many unnecessary tests may put the baby and the mother at risk of overtreatment (Wolfe, 2012). Overdiagnosis of a disease like cancer means that the disease really exists. If the disease is not there, these tests wo...