In recent times the spending on health care has been rising at a very fast rate in the US. It has been reported that this expenditure rose at a higher rate than the inflation rate in 2005. This rise was about 7% and the total spending on the issue in that year aggregated up to two trillion dollars. This amount of sum is about one sixth of the total GDP of the US. It has been reported that at this rate the spending on health care would reach 20% of the GDP by 2015. (Fletcher, 188)
It can be stated that there is a serious issue on the parameters of the costs of health insurance of the employee and the employer. The premium of the employer rose about 8% where as that of the employee rose about 9% during the 2006. During the same time frame the firms that consist of 24 or lower employees had to pay premium at a rate of about 10%. On an individual ground it could be estimated that a worker is paying about $1100 more than he was paying for health insurance back in 2000 for a family coverage. Thus it could be said that since 2000 the increase has been scaled to about a 90% higher rate.
Thus it can easily be understood the level of difficulty that a worker goes through while paying the annual premium. As a result it becomes the responsibility of the policy makers to act on the issue and prevent the speedy rise of insurance premium for the benefit of the general mass. It is true that health care policies have tremendous advantages on well being but is this is the price that a common US citizen is paying at the moment then it would be very difficult to ascertain whether to carry on with such policies or just scrap it.
For a policy maker it becomes important to enforce a schedule that would let the less earning members of the community to have breathing space by providing them health policies with lower premium margins. (Lamb, 243-245) Another important issue in this context is the rising problems of the health care premiums in parameters of medical benefits are the matter of spending related to national health care. It has been reported that at the current rate the spending would cover $5 trillion mark by 2015. As it is the total expenditure of the US on health insurance premium is about 4 times the expenditure of the defense mechanism.
But even then the entire amount of US citizens is unable to be covered under the health insurance policy schemes. It has been reported that about 50 million individuals are beyond the parameters of the health policies. This is a serious problem for nation that is already spending more than any other nations in the world on health care premiums. Thus to bridge this gap it is necessary for the policy makers to intervene in the issue and solve the problem by asserting and bargaining the insurance companies to render for these uncovered individuals with easy plans of premium structures.
(Kar, 145) Additionally, it should also be seen that the basic problems of health insurance and its premium structures relating to fraud, wastage, inappropriate care and poor management dealt in a professional manner with specialist personnel at suitable posts. This would ensure the smooth operation procedures and thus would save a good amount of time and cost which would be used for lowering the premium cost and covering the individuals who are yet to be benefited. (King, 126)