Corona scandalized ... Where does the $ 3.6 trillion that America spends annually on health go?

Mohammed Al-Minshawi-Washington

The image of three nurses at a Manhattan hospital in New York City wearing trash bags instead of protective equipment that they confirm is no longer in hospital has raised many questions about the state of medical care in the United States.

It is known that the United States leads the world in medical technology, as it has the best hospitals in the world that are rich and leaders of many countries of the world to obtain medical care that will not be available in any other country.

And America is also advancing in the field of medical scientific research, which made its universities and research centers scattered throughout the country and offer them a kiss for many doctors and researchers from different countries of the world.

The United States has been the leader and unrivaled of the Nobel Prizes in chemistry and medicine in recent decades.

Some attributed the low death rate from the emerging corona virus "Covid-19" there compared to the rest of the world for this scientific progress and the strength of medical infrastructure.

And last year, America spent nearly $ 3.6 trillion on healthcare, or 17% of gross national product, according to the National Bureau of Statistics data. This amount is five times what is spent on the US military, according to 2019 federal budget data.

Not willing
However, with the widespread epidemic of corona in the United States, American citizens were not prepared for a heavy-caliber medical confrontation, despite the huge health budget.

Americans have discovered the lack of basic and simple medical tools that do not require sophisticated technology to produce, distribute or use them in their hospitals.

American citizens are scarce about the limited availability of medical gloves, protective masks and sterile clothing necessary for health workers, in addition to the ventilators necessary for critical cases of coronavirus, especially for the elderly.

The answer to the question of the US failure to prepare and deal with the spread of the Corona epidemic is a very complex one. There is the political dimension of President Donald Trump's poor performance and his disregard of early and repeated warnings from intelligence services and health sector officials, and a lack of willingness to face large numbers of injuries.

There is also a defect in the order of priorities of public spending, and how to allocate the huge financial resources that are spent in the field of health and several times more than in the world.

A physician in the Washington area, who spoke to Al-Jazeera Net, said, "There is no justification for the lack of a strategic stockpile of these materials to deal with any emergency as the current Corona case."

Profit
"Profit is the driver of all decisions related to public health issues, and there is a dependence that has doubled in recent years in obtaining a lot of medical tools from foreign markets in China and elsewhere to cut costs," added the doctor, who preferred not to be named.

Where does $ 3.6 trillion go?
Al Jazeera Net has seen a lot of official statistics issued by the National Statistical Office, in addition to studies and reports of major health insurance companies such as Kaiser Permanente and United Insurance. And destinations for spending the US health sector budget in 2019, which amounted to $ 3.6 trillion, shown in the following table:

The federal and state governments pay $ 1.8 trillion of this cost, while citizens pay $ 1 trillion, and employers bear less than $ 1 trillion.

The cost of health insurance has increased by 740% since 1984, while the increase in wages has increased by only 24% during the same period. The lobby for health insurance companies and drug makers is active in Washington, and millions are spending to keep the current system unchanged.

A female doctor of Arab descent who works in Virginia for Al-Jazeera Net said, "It is widely believed that doctors and their auxiliary nurses get very large sums in the United States. This is not true. Those who make big gains are drug companies and insurance companies."

The average American citizen’s share of national income in 2019 was approximately $ 65,000 annually, while the average doctor’s wages average $ 200,000 annually, and the nurse receives an average of $ 75,000 annually.

The health system failed or successful?
The United States does not have a government health insurance system for all of its citizens as is the case in the rest of the advanced industrial countries, and instead adopts a mixed and complex system that left nearly 28 million Americans, or 8% of the total population, without any insurance to cover health care costs High.

The US government has realized that the number of people who are not covered by health insurance has caused a malfunction in the health system, so it issued a law in 1986 that requires all hospitals and health units to accept emergencies for any patients, regardless of their financial ability.

According to a Gallup poll last December, 54% of Americans supported private health insurance, and 42% preferred a unified government program for all Americans.

The health insurance sector is divided into three main components as follows:

Private health insurance : It is enjoyed by approximately 55% of Americans, and is provided in most cases by the employer with a financial contribution from employees and employees.

Medicare Insurance Program for the Elderly and Disabled : This government program covers 20% of citizens and residents over the age of sixty-five years, in addition to the disabled.

Medicaid Aid Health Insurance Program for the Poor and Ship for Children : This program covers 17% of poor Americans whose income does not exceed the official poverty rates.

Employers and companies do not fully cover the costs of health care for their employees and workers. Rather, workers and employees contribute different proportions to the cost of health insurance.

In the year 2019, this figure reached $ 3,800 a year, while the amount for a family of four increases to an average of $ 10,000 annually, according to statistics compiled from several specialized reports.

And some citizens who are not provided by the employer with health insurance are forced to purchase this service individually, and this costs an average of 8 thousand dollars on average, according to data for 2019.