The United States of America is currently recording the highest healthcare costs in the world, and despite this, its health care system is not one of the best in the world in terms of quality, efficiency and accessibility. Many costs that could be avoided continue to add up to the healthcare costs in the United States. While the country is currently emphasizing the need to have quality care and to have the insurance companies reimburse hospitals based on quality and not quantity, insurance companies continue to pay for costs related to staff negligence and for which could have been avoided. Issues such as medical errors, hospital-acquired infections,and other injuries are in the rise, and these add unnecessary costs to the health care system.
The health insurance companies should not cover for the medical costs incurred as a result of the acts of negligence such as injuries in the hospitals, medical errors and hospital-acquired infections. If a patient receives a hospital-acquired an infection while being treated for something covered by either Medicare or Medicaid, the insurance firms should not cover up for the cost, and instead should be incurred by the hospital itself because the rule does not allow the hospital to charge the bill on the patient. According to the reports by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), applying this rule can help improve the accuracy of quality and safety of the patients. When the hospitals are charged for the costs of medication resulting from the medical errors and hospital-acquired information, it will force the management of these hospitals to implement quality programs that ensure its staff is more responsible for avoiding errors during care. It can help improve the accuracy of the payment programs while also providing an incentive for the hospitals to engage in the quality improvement efforts.
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Quality of the healthcare system needs to be improved, and hospitals must have the incentives to improve the quality of their care. When any hospital is engaged in low-quality care and causes harm to the patients, they must be held responsible for the negligence by taking over the cost of medication as a result of the error. Hospital-acquiredinfectionsand medical errors kill more than 100000 Americans annually according to the reports by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention ( Makary &Daniel, 2016 ). More than 25 billion dollars are spent annually to treat patients as a result of hospital-acquired infections and medical errors. This shows how the high costs of health care are attributed to medical errors and acts of negligence in hospitals. By insurers not covering for such costs, it will mobilize the hospitals to improve care and keep patients safe.
One of the factors to consider while choosing a health insurance plan is the deductibles. This is the amount one has to pay out of pocket before being covered. This is important in getting a health coverage plan that is not expensive and that which meets the health requirements. The other consideration is whether the plan covers for medicines. One has to focus on whether the prescriptions are covered by the insurance plan. Every insurance coverage plan has a list of medicines that are covered by the plan. If a medicine not covered by the plan is prescribed, the patient will have to use money out of pocket to pay for the medication. Therefore, it is important than an individual considers what medicines are covered by each coverage plan before choosing the one to join. This helps prevent the client from incurring many expenses related to medicines and other costs.
Reference
Makary, M. A., & Daniel, M. (2016). Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US. BMJ , 353 , i2139.
