Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
Rising healthcare costs has turned into a concern for most nations, societies and even individuals. The capability to cope with this issue and its own implications will be greatly looked into in this report. In order to understand how to tackle this obstacle, there’s a need to first understand the root causes, in other words, what causes healthcare costs to rise. After having viewed some of the normal beliefs of rising healthcare costs, the article will then look at the strategies put in place to take on this challenge. To take action, the report will utilize a few journal articles to critically discuss on the potency of Singapore’s healthcare funding system and recommend measures that will assist solve the problem better.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
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Literature Review
A very common and simple reason that folks give for the upsurge in professional medical costs often fall season on the actual fact of aging population and the increased vulnerability of the population to health issues, resulting in more medical consultations, both inpatient and outpatient. This in turn, causing medical costs to go up. Another common reason that many people give for the upsurge in healthcare costs is inflation. Inflation triggers the prices of goods and services to go up. When such happens, the costs of health care will surge because the salary of the workforce employed in the professional medical industry increases, the expenses of medication boosts and the expenses of medical health insurance increases, for example. (Cockerham, 2010)Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
The Firm for Economic Co-operation and Development mentioned a significant increase of average ratio of health spending to GDP in its 31 member countries. The article also suggested that while technological advancement caused improvement in medical diagnosis and treatment, this also contributed to the increasing of health spending (OECD Health Data 2010, 2010).
In another statement, rising health care costs was related to increased use of progressive medical technology. However, the record suggested that increasing healthcare costs could also be because of the market electricity of healthcare providers. In the record, however, it seemed to suggest that the magnitude of the upsurge in rising health care costs in developed countries like the United States in terms of the marketplace power of health care providers tend to be more significant than that in producing countries. (Annals of Internal Medication, 2005)Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
It is undeniable that no country is able to guarantee accessible healthcare for all. However, the situation in low-income countries is a lot more critical as some are even unable to ensure access to basic healthcare because of its citizens. Some options proposed to tackle this issue include governments increasing their budget allocations on health expenditure, raising additional local money for health or diversifying their financing options (World Health Organization, 2011).Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
Another interesting cause outlined for the increase in rising healthcare costs could be scheduled to our interpersonal behaviour in conditions of financial prudence whenever a third party pays our medical charges. It really is interesting to note that whenever our medical charges payment falls on the duties of an authorized (i. e. employer, insurance company or federal government) and we pay just a tiny and affordable percentage, we will seek medical appointment, analysis and treatment even for the slightest health problems.
A case study on Singapore healthcare financing system is performed to discuss how these things to consider are managed and exactly how it can be further advanced.
Case analysis: Singapore healthcare system financing
According to 1 of the study studies, Singapore’s ageing population which is predicted to increase by 12% in 2030 to 19% of its human population being made up of old Singaporeans aged 65 and above. This is of a problem in ensuring provision of affordable medical especially where responsibility of the healthcare bill often comes on the kids of this segment of the society.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
Singapore’s health care system focuses on developing independence and interdependence of its people on the nation. In order not to create total reliance and reliance on the nation, “Singapore’s healthcare system starts with building a healthy human population through preventive healthcare programmes and promoting a healthy lifestyle (Ministry of Health, Singapore, 2007)”.
Singapore’s health care system then ensures affordability of medical care to its people through offering common coverage and multiple levels of safeguard. In this plan, this is done through (1) “heavy administration subsidies as high as 80% of the full total bill in acute public hospital wards, which all Singaporeans can access”, (2) “, a compulsory individual medical savings account scheme that allows pretty much all Singaporeans to pay for their share of medical treatment without financial difficulty”, (3) “Medishield, an inexpensive catastrophic medical insurance scheme, which allows Singaporeans to effectively risk-pool the financial dangers of major diseases. Individual responsibility for one’s professional medical needs is promoted through the features of deductibles and co-payment in Medishield. Eldershield, a severe disability insurance, is also designed for registration by Singaporeans to risk-pool against financial hazards of suffering a severe impairment. ” and (4) “Medifund, which is a medical endowment account setup by the federal government to do something as the ultimate back-up for needy Singaporeans who cannot manage to pay their medical bills despite heavy subsidies, Medisave and Medishield” (Ministry of Health, Singapore, 2007).Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
To promote competition and transparency in order to counter further unwarranted rise in health care costs, “in 2004, the Ministry of Health started out to publish hospital bill sizes showing the variation in costs among our nursing homes, with a view to motivate our hospitals on this effort to “do more with less”. There have been some successes since that time in spurring advancements, e. g. LASIK prices slipped by more than S$1, 000 per eyeball and the competitive price wars continue steadily to this day, at great gain to consumers. The Ministry in addition has progressively posted health outcomes on the site to encourage further advancements and help patients make more enlightened selections. ” Singapore’s success was further reinforced by its reports on authorities spending in 2008, when “Singapore spent about S$ 10. 2 billion or 3. 9% of GDP on medical care. Out of this the Government expended S$2. 7 billion or 1. 0% of GDP on health services” (Ministry of Health, Singapore, 2007).Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
Discussion: Success of Singapore’s strategies in taking care of rising healthcare costs
Singapore’s focus on the ideology that protection is better than cure helps managing rising healthcare costs by pushing its population to reduce the need of seeking medical attention and thus reducing considerably incurring of such expenditure. Its preventive medical programs such as free or subsidized community health screening programs and activities targeted at promoting productive living and healthy lifestyle makes being healthy a simple way of life which can be done to achieve. Furthermore, this ideology will continue to tackle the enduring problem of maturing society and the increased vulnerability of the population to health issues, which is reported to be a cause for rising healthcare costs.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
With stressors of your fast-paced meritocratic culture such as stress at college at an extremely early age, stress of work after working life and the stress of aiding and maintaining a family, this often triggers someone to become sick and also have to carefully turn to medical attention for relief. Consequently, Singapore would need to consider strategies how to take on such non-health issues that can lead to healthcare expenditure, in order to further assist its human population to manage rising healthcare costs.
Next, having reviewed the precautionary strategy used by Singapore, the Medisave and Medifund benefits would be reviewed. It is important to first recognize that only Singapore Individuals and Singapore Permanent Residents adding to the Central Provident Account (CPF) as well as his dependents (i. e. partner, children, parents and grandparents) would be able to benefit from the Medisave.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
In addition to subsidizing healthcare costs, the Medisave can be used to pay the prices of MediShield, which covers up to 80% of a huge medical expenses at the category B2/C level or any appropriate involved shield plans from approved private insurers (Ministry of Health, Singapore, 2007). This enables the average person and his dependents who are subscribed to the MediShield or the built in shield plans to really have the most, if not all, of the inpatient and outpatient professional medical expenses, including co-insurance and deductible to be taken attention and omits the individual’s stress of having the necessity to seek sufficient cash funding for such a purpose. Therefore, really helps to minimise the social stressor of medical need.
While this might end up being beneficial to its population, it’s important to note that as the huge benefits is still rather limited. In comparison to its entire population being able to reap the benefits of such initiatives, there’s a burden created on the CPF-contributing individual to provide for both his personal and dependents’ medical needs and costs, using the Medisave. Should the CPF-contributing person be the only real breadwinner of the household, this would inevitably create further psychosocial stressor on him which might pose possibly cause health deterioration and create unwarranted expenses on health care needs. Therefore, Singapore would need to relook into providing professional medical financial subsidies to its human population who are do not contribute to the CPF, for its method of manage rising professional medical costs to work and complete.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
On the surface of the Medisave, the Medifund program is present to help ensure needy Singapore individuals who are unable to purchase their medical expenses, are still supplied with the necessary medical treatment. To be able to take advantage of the Medifund, a set of basic requirements must be met, such as the patient and his family having difficulty affording the medical costs despite heavy government subsidies, MediShield and Medisave (Ministry of Health, Singapore, 2007).Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay. While the Medifund program shows the federal government great matter and active initiatives to ensuring health care is catered to the needy of its inhabitants, the initiative continues to be not wholesome and so need to be relooked into, such as in a situation where a patient meets almost all of the criteria explained but comes from a shattered family and has a family member who’s able but won’t purchase the patient’s medical costs, he might then struggle to take advantage of the Medifund. In this case, further implications and repercussions to the patient’s mental and physical health may get worse his existing condition. Not only will his medical expenses continue steadily to snowball, his physical health issues may continue steadily to deteriorate as well.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
Indeed, Singapore’s strategies in handling rising healthcare costs through its present healthcare system seem thorough and complete. However, you may still find some areas that Singapore would need to relook and give attention to in order that the strategies would be effective for its society. Together with the known simple fact that change is the sole constant, a review system would thus have to be in location to improve strategies executed to manage increasing healthcare costs effectively.
A recommended way for Singapore to review and put into practice more wholesome, comprehensive and effective strategies to managing rising health care costs may be that of utilizing differential healthcare funding schemes that would assist the many socio-economic segments of its inhabitants.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.
Secondly, as growing healthcare costs due to inflation has yet to be tackled by its current strategies, Singapore may need to review its job assistance and salary settlement ways of better assist its society in managing rising healthcare costs, such as guaranteeing its human population who are unemployed to have the ability to seek job or reemployment within a short while shape as well as ensuring that the salary settlement for each profession or job would be appropriately accorded predicated on skills, talents, experience, performance as well as inflation.Singapore Health care Health And Public Care Essay.