Many Americans are not aware of the large costs incurred by the
government for health care because they view the health care
situation from their own personal perspective. For most Americans,
personal expenditures on health care are significant, and many have
had their savings depleted, have increased credit card debt, have had
to make a difficult choice between paying health care bills or buying
necessities, or have had medical debt sent to a collection agency due
to substantial medical bills (norc, n.d.). For most people, out-of-
pocket costs are too high and the quality of medical services for the
amount spent is too low (norc, n.d.). In addition, the majority of
Americans think that the government should cover more of the
population under Medicare or Medicaid (norc, n.d.).
As a result, most people are not looking at health care from the
government’s perspective. Annual government spending on health
care is approximately $3.5 trillion and has outpaced GDP growth
year after year (Martin et al., 2019). To make matters worse, the
implementation of the Affordable Care Act and its subsequent
expansions of Medicare and Medicaid have dramatically increased
the government’s health care spending and projections show that the
government will be paying nearly 50% of all health care costs in this
country within 10 years (khn, n.d.). This type of spending is
unsustainable without drastic tax increases or significant service
reductions.
As the older population in America continues to grow, federal
spending for Medicare is expected to increase substantially while the
majority of health care consumers pay only a third of the total annual
health care bill (khn.org). I believe that Americans spend more time
obsessing over co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses than the burden
of health care costs on the government. We often hear of support
for universal health care or “Medicare for all”, but the truth is that
most Americans do not fully understand the finances needed to
implement such a system (khn, n.d.). Not until a discussion about
mandatory contributions into a universal health care system and
subsequent tax increases will Americans finally realize just how much
money is needed to maintain our health care system.
Martin, A. B., Hartman, M., Washington, B., Catlin, A., & National
Health Expenditure Accounts Team. (2019). National health care
