Finding Solutions... Not Problems

Health care reform. It is a heated issue which many find themselves at odds with. On the one side, there are the people that applaud Obamacare and welcome the new legislation in the name of reform. Yet, there are also many on the other side of the fence who believe that Obamacare will make the current health care system even worse. Regardless of which side you fall on however it seems that many are losing sight of the bigger issue here. That issue is finding solutions. Many are quick to dismiss Obamacare citing its many faults and problems, yet they are not really providing any solutions to counter the issue. The fact is, that we are all in agreement that the current health care system is in need of a major overhaul. The unbelievably high cost of health care coupled with the high rate of uninsured Americans is cause for concern for everyone at the moment. By what are we doing about it? It seems that many of us are sitting by criticizing proposed reform plans while we are offering no real solution to the issue at hand. The health care system is wasting away money each day while we sit idly by and do nothing about it. CBS News reports that currently 750 billion dollars a year is squandered away. That equates to 30 cents of very medical dollar the average American spends on health care. The Institute of Medicine released a report detailing the areas of waste within the health care system. Those areas include unnecessary services ($210 billion annually); inefficient delivery of care ($130 billion); excess administrative costs ($190 billion); inflated prices ($105 billion); prevention failures ($55 billion), and fraud ($75 billion). Although there were some areas of overlap, the members of the institute agreed upon the rough figure of 750 billion dollars wasted annually. These are the areas of our health care system we should be particularly concerned with. Many Americans are left underinsured or dropped from their insurance companies altogether in order for them to save money and cut costs at our expense. We are paying higher costs while the money we are paying into the system is being used frivolously by those in charge. This in turn means that we are receiving a lower quality of health care due to the waste incurred by the health care companies. The fact is that 750 billion dollars annually is enough to provide health care for the uninsured, yet we are relying on higher taxes and budget cuts for a solution, when the real solution is cutting the waste of our current health care system. in my personal opinion the best way to counter these effects is to be cognizant consumers and become more educated about our health care system. After all the current system cannot survive if we both as citizens and consumers start asking questions and raising concerns about the state of our nations health care.