All For A Pretty Penny: Unaffordable Health Care

 Christian Orizabal

All For A Pretty Penny: Unaffordable Health Care

The COVID-19 Pandemic was a massive scare for all. Panic ensued as no one knew what to do to combat this new life threatening virus. After a couple months of being trapped inside the first vaccine came out and was released to the public for administration. Soon after the second vaccine would come out and many schools would require you to have it administered to be allowed on campus. I went to a medical clinic to have the second vaccine administered and was told that my insurance wouldn’t cover me receiving the second vaccine and that I would have to fork over $40. I left the clinic and visited another clinic that was located in another town not far away from me and they administered the vaccine for free. How could two medical clinics administer the same vaccine, yet one of them required a fee and the other didn’t? Especially in a time when the vaccine is in such high demand.

Since 1996 up until 2013 the amount spent on medicine has skyrocketed from $1.2 to $2.1 trillion. In an article for Missouri Medicine, Charles Van Way claims that roughly 23% of the increase is due simply to population growth, 12% due to aging of the population. Charles then points out that a third of the reason as to why the total spending on medicine has shot up is due to inherent population factors. Due to the population naturally growing and getting older, medicine is in higher demand and due to the current economy, the industry wants to capitalize on this and this increase in spending and profit as much as humanly possible. On top of this Charles later writes, ”Changes in disease prevalence overall were associated with a small spending reduction of around 2.4%. Naturally, some diseases increased … and some decreased …, but the overall effect was close to nil.“ The severity of diseases, or rather the need for medicine has not increased, disregarding the increase in population. When a disease has become more prevalent, another would deplete and thus this balance has kept the need for medicine steady in regard to the current population. This belief is backed up by the fact that it was later shown that 50% of the price increase had to do with changes in service price and intensity. These increases in prices are absurd especially when the mass population is unable to receive these, in some cases, life changing care.

It is no secret that the US has one of the most expensive healthcare systems. An article released by KFF states that about half of U.S. adults find it somewhat or very difficult to afford health care costs, not to mention if they are uninsured in which case they would say it is definitely difficult to afford health care. Imagine needing life changing medical care, and not being able to receive it due to being uninsured, or even not being able to afford the costs despite being insured. It’s a lose lose situation. “Adults in households with annual incomes under $40,000 are more than three times as likely as adults in households with incomes over $90,000 to say it is difficult to afford their health care costs (69% v. 21%).” Those who aren’t fortunate enough to make a large salary struggle especially when a drug like doxycycline saw an 8000% in price rising from $0.03 to $5.00 per dose over the past decades (Missouri Medicine).

The current state of the medical field is in shambles being bound by greed. Medicine has never been more expensive and it is unaffordable to a great majority of the general public. This applies to most but not all however. Those are transparent and are in the industry due to a love for their craft, and not for the profit are the ones that are the bright lights of the industry. The ones that are willing to not mislead their patients and are willing to spend the time to make sure they understand everything that is going on.