Health Care

Kayla Kogod

Mrs. Straub

Economics

12 May 2014

Health Care

Health Care is a service that everyone needs, no matter the cost. The benefit of this service is in high demand for everyone. What is interesting, is how greatly one service can affect the economy. In the circumstance of this service being provided for people through work, or having the struggle to pay for it on their own will show how drastically the economy will change.

Health care makes up for about one- sixth of the economy, which is more than any other industry. Health care covers money paid to health care providers such as hospitals, doctors, dentists, physical therapists, health services at schools, clinics, nursing homes, and the list continues. The cost of health care for the average person is continuously growing. Beyond the inflation rate which is currently standing at 1.5%.

“Spending on health care totals about $2.5 trillion, 17.5 percent of our gross domestic product -- a measure of the value of all goods and services produced in the United States. That's up from 13.8 percent of GDP in 2000 and 5.2 percent in 1960, when health spending totaled just $27.5 billion -- barely 1 percent of today's level, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy group.” (Johnson)

According to the graph above it is showing the growth in GDP from 2000-2011. GDP stands for gross domestic product, which it the total value of all final goods and services produced within the economy during that specific time period.

Companies use to offer health care as a benefit, but they are finding it is too expensive to cover the cost for their employees. The high cost is then forcing companies to cut the benefit of Health Care out. This then leaves that expense to now fall on each individual person that no longer is receiving the benefit of Health Care. That is a huge expense for people to have to cover on their own, and if they can’t afford it, then they can’t purchase health insurance, and are then forced to take that risk of having to go without it.

So what once was a benefit for employees now has become a salary cut, because the employee has to pay out of their own pocket now; the full coverage of health insurance.

And with health insurance so expensive, the plans that they choose from are not going to have the highest quality of coverage, so they aren’t going to have quality health care.

Just how families have gone bankrupt because of hospital bills that insurance wouldn’t cover. God forbid someone in their family got sick with a serious disease such as cancer, their bills will sky rocket and make it next to impossible for them to ever pay. They will then have fallen into extreme debt.

This will cause the economy to drop dramatically, because people will not have as much money to spend, so they won’t be putting the money back into the government, which will then cause prices to rise and the unemployment rate to increase, due to companies now not making enough money to pay their employees.

Overall, Health Care is a huge part of the economy. It benefits so many people, however when companies stop covering their employees for health care, people struggle to pay for it on their own. They are left to go without it, or to barely scrape by on paying for it. This will affect the economy greatly and really puts into perspective how important yet expensive this service is.