Medical Needs Weigh Heavy on US Healthcare system
The health care crisis in the US is worsening by the day. US citizens are making unprecedented demands on the healthcare system with over a billion visits a year to clinics, doctor’s offices and emergency rooms. Statistics released by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention show the 1.1 billion visits for medical care in 2006, measured up to an average of four visits per person every year.
The nation’s population has grown by eleven percent from 1996 to 2006, while the hospital and doctor visits have risen by twenty-six percent. Even more surprising is the rapid rise in Emergency room visits. ERs all across the nation have recorded an average of 227 patients per minute. The increase in the country’s aged population is being cited as the reason for the increase in hospital and doctor visits by the CDC. As compared to younger people, the old need more care and they are utilizing health care more now than ever in the past.
President of the Mid-America Coalition on Health Care, William Bruning said that this increase in health care consumption may be happening for both bad and good reasons. He also said that the advertising by hospitals and drug companies might also possibly be driving people to seek more and probably unnecessary health care. This is not a one-off report regarding the health-care crisis that the US is facing. The future President will have to make sure that this is one problem he has a solution to in order to bring in the votes.
