As Americans, one may say that our biggest fear is the doctor’s office and the health care system. This is an appropriate statement due to the fact that a majority of Americans are health illiterate. So, what does it mean to be health literate? Health.gov definition on health literacy is as follows: Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions (1). The To give a perspective of how health illiterate Americans are almost nine out of ten Americans are considered to have Intermediate, Basic, or Below Basic health literacy (2). Why is this number so high? Is it because health information that is provided …show more content…
The data I have pulled is from Center of Disease Control website which gives us an estimate of 28.2 million individuals under the age of 65. With a current population of 323.1 million people that is not a bad percentage of uninsured people (This is about 8.72% of our population)(3). Now let us talk of the different types of insurance in broad terms. There is private insurance and public insurance. Private insurance is typically where an individual has insurance through their employer or has purchased a policy on their own. These private polices allow individuals to usually pick and choose their preferred hospitals and doctors. On the other hand, we have public insurance which is government insurance such as Medicaid and Medicare. Individuals must qualify for these types of insurance based on their income, age, and disabilities. Public insurance is stricter when it comes to choice of doctors and hospitals. So now that we know how many Americans are insured and what types of insurances are available, how many are able to determine how much it would cost them to pay for their medical services. A survey was conducted with over 2,000 participants on four basic terms of healthcare coverage. The results were staggering and showed only 4% of Americans are able to understand these four basic terms of their coverages. The terms discussed in the survey were deductible, …show more content…
A news article by the New York Times that read “How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater” caught my eye. This article stated, “At White Plains Hospital, a patient with private insurance from Aetna was charged $91 for one unit of Hospira IV that cost the hospital 86 cents, according to a hospital spokeswoman, Eliza O’Neill.” This is a practice done by hospitals in the U.S across the board. There is almost a 200% mark up on any equipment of an individual will receive. The IV bag is one of the more extreme cases where a bag that costs less than a dollar to produce ends up costing patients hundreds of dollars. The United States compared to many other nations that are similar to it spends about 6% more GDP in health care spending. The influx on health insurance spending for the United States came around the 1980’s. The date provided by Common Wealth Fund that the United States almost spends twice as much as money on health insurance per capita. Is this possibly because the pharmaceutical companies like to keep American’s drugged up? According to Common Wealth Fund, “Americans were top consumers of prescription drugs. Based on findings from the 2013 Commonwealth Fund International Surveys, adults in the U.S. and New Zealand on average take more prescription drugs (2.2 per adult) than adults in other countries.(7)” This probably does not surprise many American’s because over the