Health Care Policy: The Past And The Future

Submitted By ShellieKaye
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Week Three Current Article Review
Carrie "Shellie" Cobbs
Health Care Policy: The Past and the Future
HCS 455
Mark Haddock
July 22, 2014
Week Three Current Article Review
Article Review
This article is about the changes between 1960-2012 in the way that health care dollars have been spent and who has been paying for the cost if rising health care costs. In this article the California HealthCare Foundation created an animated graphic that shows the progression of health care costs between 1960-2012 you can see when Medicare and Medicaid were started and how the costs started to change direction.
Hospital charges have always been the largest portion paid out by health insurance companies. Medicare and Medicaid pay out a large portion of the expenses to hospital but commercial insurance also pays out “36 percent of hospital expenses were paid by private insurance in 1960, and the same proportion is covered by private insurance today” (McIntyre, 2014, p. 1). With the new Medicare and Medicaid programs out-of-pocket expenses began to drop significantly and prescriptions that were paid for with out-of-pocket funds were reduced as well.
National or Global Perspective
This article provides a national perspective on the issues of rising health care costs.
Affect
This information directly affects my mom who just went on Medicare after being forced into retirement. She has always had commercial insurance through her employers and navigating a very difficult and non-user