Growth in Health Expenditures Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Growth in Health Expenditures - Article Example Apparently, between 1993 and 2003, the health care expenditures in the US grew from a total of $900 billion to $1.7 trillion which was equivalent to an increase from 13.3% of the total gross domestic product (GDP) to 15.3%. When these values were compared to the health expenditures in Canada, Germany, Japan and the UK, it was realized that the US had the highest health care costs and expenditures (Zuckerman and McFeeters, 2006). The table below summarizes the trends in health care expenditures. As noted by Rettig (1994), new and improved medical technologies have been seen in areas such as: the development of new treatments for terminal conditions such as AIDS, cancer and diabetes; treatments related to untreatable acute conditions such as coronary artery bypass graft; clinical progress for patients with mental illness and/ or substance abuse; procedures for treating secondary diseases within a disease, for example erythropoietin which treats anaemia in dialysis patients. Moreover, technological equipments such as sonogram machines and dialysis equipment together; new procedures such as laproscopic gall bladder surgery and new treatments such as statins to control cholesterol and cardiac catheterization have also contributed largely to the total health care spending. Despite that, it was noted that technology can equally increase the standard costs for treatments and it can also lower the standard unit costs of treatments so as to allow more people to benefit from the treatments being offered. For example, cardiac catheterization has increased the standard cost of treatments since it is highly used to treat and monitor heart attacks while laproscopic gall bladder surgery has lowered the unit cost of treatment so as to allow more patients to undergo the procedure as compared to using the open gall bladder surgery (Zuckerman and McFeeters, 2006). The aging population has been increasing rapidly over the past few