I have seen the issues there are with healthcare and how bad the workers get treated, sometimes even underpaid. It will continue to go on like if the government doesn’t do anything to help, over the years has gotten lower compared to other countries with free healthcare and this will most likely continue to rise. The U.S could improve with its system in a number of ways, starting with these four issues.

High Healthcare cost

Patients have been worried about how much an appointment might cost, or, how much it would cost to call an ambulance, which a lot of people try not to call one, since the ambulance in the U.S cost around $1,200. Some people don’t even have insurance to cover at least some of it, since they might not have enough money, and even if you have insurance they could still not pay for it if they don’t want to, which happens a lot. Sometimes insurance companies could deny lifesaving surgery, or treatments, and even meds, since it saves them money and which they also earn money from doing this.

People struggle with not being able to afford their meds, as they, if not, are too expensive for them, and this will most likely keep happening. Some Americans would take on debt, less on activities and food, borrowed money from friends and family, took out a loan, sold personal belongings.

Top 5 most expensive meds:

• Hemgenix-$3.5 million (one time)

Hemophilia B – blood clotting disorder due to factor IX deficiency.

• Elevidys-$3.2 million (one time)

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) – progressive muscle weakness.

• Skysona-$3.0 million (one time)

Cerebral Adrenoleukodystrophy (CALD) – fatal brain disorder in boys.

• Zynteglo-$2.8 million (one time)

Beta-thalassemia- genetic anemia requiring red blood cell transfusions.

• Zolgensma-$2.25 million (one time)

spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) – genetic muscle weakness in infants.

With all this you can tell with these meds that they can help a lot of people, but with how much it cost they will most likely not be able to pay for it or even have insurance pay for it as its too expensive, and even if they did they still wouldn’t have enough money to pay for it. Especially with insulin, in the U.S insulin cost $98.70 per valve, but if you have Medicaid, you will only pay $35 a month. Most countries in Europe cost only $7-12 per valve and can be as low as $5 in Poland.

With all this in mind there are a few solutions to this, one could be to tax people so they wouldn’t have to worry about paying health insurance, as this is what the U.K does to help pay for their healthcare. They still do make you pay for certain subscriptions but not as much as the U.S and children and pensioners are exempt from having to pay for medications. Another solution is to still have all of that and also have employees help fund it as well, as this is what Germany and Japan do to help pay for it. Finally, they can still charge a small co-pay with all of the other ideas, so they are still making money. With all of this they still have medical insurance to help pay healthcare costs, but people don’t have to worry about paying as much as you have to in the U.S.

 Uninsured children in Pennsylvania

In 2024 more than 153,000 kids in the state didn’t have healthcare insurance, which is up from 147,000 in 2023. The increase in 2024 reflected the number of families that have been kicked off of Medicaid, which happened after the shutdown, this caused a lot of people getting kicked off. Federal changes to Medicaid made in the budget reconciliation bill that was sign by Donald Trump, will likely lead to another big spike in Pennsylvania.

The big beautiful bill will cause major issues for families who don’t have big incomes, since this bill plans to target Medicaid and food stamps, this is projected to be 11.8 million people to lose their health insurance by 2034. Stricter state financing rules, this will mean that states cannot use provider taxes to help fund Medicaid, which will lead to 340 billion in cuts.

With this there are a lot of changes to what the work requirements are, since now you have to work at least 80 hours a month to keep their coverage. More frequent eligibility checks. This will mean that you will have to renew your coverage each 6 months, instead of yearly.

Lastly, higher copayments, this will affect how much you pay per doctor visit, which is up to $35 dollars for some people. 

The solution for this is to make sure they don’t have to pay as much and have a no charge fee for children, as this is so the families don’t have to worry on paying when they don’ t have healthcare insurance, or their healthcare insurance doesn’t want to pay for it, as we need to make it affordable for everyone still not just for children.

Workforce shortages

The healthcare industry has been slowly losing people over the years for many reasons, but people never understand why, or how bad it could be. It is projected the number of shortages to be 37,800 and 124,000 physicians. while for the nurses to be about 1/3 of the U.S considering leaving their jobs due to stress and other problems.

During this the patients also see this, as this has led to the declining satisfaction of patients with their experience. These show that most likely the patients will end up switching doctors, which leads to the decline of revenue for hospitals, and eventually can make them shut down.

Certain nurses don’t get paid as much as they should, as most nurses think they should get paid more with what they have to deal with on a daily basis. Nurses are important, as they help monitor patients, help keep documents on the patients, help educate the patients family about the health conditions, and help administer medications to patients. But people forget they are a big help to the doctors so they can continue to other patients and not take so long to treat or talk to a patient.

Medical errors and patient safety 

Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. One study has shown that each year 400,ooo patients are hospitalized that are preventable, while the other is estimated to be 200,000 or more due to preventable medical errors.

Most of the time when this happens, they end up getting sued, which always has a high cost when it comes to medical errors, and sometimes even jail for those who operated or prescribed these to the patients.

The most common types of errors are, surgical, diagnostic, medication, equipment, communication errors. These common errors are quite easy to avoid, since with these you have to pay attention to what you’re doing, especially with surgical operations, as most usually have a list of everything they need to have like their tools, and make sure they don’t leave anything that could cause the patient harm, as most doctors have nurses to help make sure they have everything.

Another safety concern is that they have a delay in care, which then ends up affecting them through drug, supply, and equipment shortages. I saw this happen quite a lot in 2020, as most weren’t ready and didn’t have enough beds, or certain equipment to help.

Communication is the key to avoiding a lot of these, as the healthcare workers think the other worker already know what the patients need, or just not tell them, and with this, most workers might not know what’s happening with the patient, or assume you already done the right check before a surgery, or don’t tell the patient about what happens with certain medications.

For this it’s hard for certain things to accept meds, as they should know and understand how much they should give and what not to give, but they are usually taught this, and for this they should get agreement from other doctors to see if that is the right choice. Surgeries are hard since they take a long time to operate, and they already have something for this which is counting that they have everything, but even with this you need to pay attention to what the sergeants are doing as they need the nurses to help them grab certain tools, so if something goes wrong it’s on both sides.

How healthcare has changed since covid 19.

 After the pandemic stopped, people didn’t know if they could trust healthcare or not. As covid impacted this factor a lot, and continues too, as well as violence against healthcare workers has risen, and could continue to rise if the workers don’t have more protection against this, since nurses are at more risk of getting assaulted by their patients as they don’t have enough protection compared to other healthcare workers.

To make changes to the system will take someone who wants to make a change and not try to defund healthcare, like one certain president have, which causes them to have uncertain rates and for the cost to go up, which effects a lot of people. I think we should increase funding and increase pay for nurses, doctors and others so it makes them want to help people. They should have a certain tax for healthcare that doesn’t change, even though people might not get tax it’s for them to get help more easier without having to pay as much, also have them get public and private funding. But the government should be the one helping pay for this and want to help people, but when you keep defunding it, it will just make people not able to afford healthcare or make them too scared to go to the hospital as they don’t want to pay so much money. These are my main ways that the government could have free healthcare and promote people to work in that field and want to stay at their jobs.