To What Extent Does the American Health Care Market Represent a Market Failure?

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TO WHAT EXTENT DOES THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE MARKET REPRESENT A MARKET FAILURE?

What: An enquiry into market failures that exist in the market for healthcare in America.
How: Individual and group research, analysis, application and judgement forming culminating in a group presentation.
Why: Healthcare markets represent the single largest markets in an economy and will continue to grow into the future.

The American healthcare market is a market worth $3.4 Tn, a market that represents around 18% of Total GDP (economic output). American Healthcare has seen rising costs like many healthcare systems and is based on a private insurance rather than state insurance system. Of the subtypes of health insurance coverage, employer-based insurance covered 55.7 percent of the population, followed by Medicaid (19.4 percent), Medicare (16.7 percent), direct-purchase (16.2 percent), and military coverage (4.6 percent). Around 12% of Americans have no health insurance and this number has risen from a low of 10% in 2016.

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US Health Care Spending: Who Pays? - California Health Care Foundation
Over the past 56 years, there have been major shifts in how we pay for hospital care, physician services, long-term care, prescription drugs, and other health care services and products in the US. In 1960, Medicare and Medicaid did not yet exist. Only half of hospital care was covered by insurance, with the rest paid out ...

How has Obamacare fared under Trump?
With midterm elections fast approaching, national polls show Obamacare is still a key issue for Americans. President Donald Trump promised to dismantle his predecessor's landmark 2010 healthcare law, but to what extent has he succeeded? Repealing individual mandate Congressional Republicans last year finally succeeded in repealing the Obamacare requirement that people buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty.

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The UK's National Health Service has been saluted for its cost-effective method of providing universal health care. But increased wait times, canceled surgeries and overwhelmed hospitals have put its effectiveness in the spotlight.

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MITCH MCCONNELL was visibly distraught after the Republicans' "skinny repeal" of Obamacare was defeated in the Senate, but he was not too out of sorts to get in a dig at Europe. The majority leader wondered acidly what ideas Democrats might have for fixing American health insurance, and noted that most Democratic senators had voted "present" on a bill proposing that America should embrace a single-payer system.

How to compare health-care systems
BRITAIN'S National Health Service (NHS) was recently judged the "world's best health-care system" by the Washington-based Commonwealth Fund in its latest ranking of 11 rich countries' health provision. The Commonwealth Fund tends to give the NHS a pretty clean bill of health in its assessments (it also scores Switzerland, Sweden and Australia highly).

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Universal health insurance is a common good
SINCE the first rumblings of the current move towards universal health care got going two years ago, one of the arguments that's come up is the question of whether health care is a public good.

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2DA. To What Extent Does the American Health Care Market Represent a Market Failure?