🏥 Kids, Families, and Communities Are Paying the Price for a Broken Healthcare System

There is a lot of public concern about the state of the U.S. Healthcare System.

Our country collectively spends more than $5 Trillion annually on healthcare and has some of the worst health outcomes of any wealthy nation.  Federal and state healthcare expenses represent a double-digit percentage of our GDP, and yet families endure expensive healthcare premium costs - the system is broken.

Below are some general observations - public surveys consistently focus on certain key themes:

• Youth Behavioral Health

  • There exists a significant lack of adequate resources for children to access when faced with behavioral health challenges – forcing them to seek help in emergency rooms or other high-cost care facilities.  This leads to worse health outcomes, and the costs are significant to the entire healthcare system.

  • Three potential improvements:

    • Invest in prevention – such as expanding youth mental health training.

    • Change reimbursement policies so that children can get mental health resources in school settings where they are many times more likely to accept care.

    • Fund nonprofits that address upstream issues.
      

• Healthy Eating

  • Increase research around the prevalence of diet-related chronic conditions - such as heart disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol - which are costing billions of dollars to treat.

  • Invest in preventative care – help people eat healthier, providing access to nourishing foods to change the trajectory of diet-related health issues.

  • Offer nutrition benefits and better education on controlling type 2 diabetes through healthy eating habits.

  • Scale food as a medicine throughout healthcare systems.
    

• Unregulated Drug Market

  • Counterfeit pills, psychedelics, and cutting agents dilute drug purity – ranging from harmless baking soda to potent fentanyl – posing serious risk of death.

    • Help people make better decisions about what they put in their bodies.  It is important that users know what kind of substances they are using, reducing the risk of using laced drugs.
      

• Extended Access to Care

  • How can we bring services, data, and expertise to help move the needle on these pervasive problems?

  • The private sector can’t solve this alone; policy can’t solve the problem alone; and the nonprofit sector can’t solve the problem alone.  We need more collaborative solutions.

    • Nonprofits understand local solutions; policy can help scale these local solutions to ensure lasting change; the private sector can help innovate quickly.

  • Everyone should be able to live a healthy life.  We should be able to do that within a generation if we bring together the private sector, the public sector, and nonprofits.
    

These and other healthcare issues should be addressed by a coordinated effort among universities, healthcare research institutions, nonprofit healthcare organizations, federal and state government healthcare departments, and the general public through focused polling and social media to provide a venue for the public to offer suggestions which can be screened by all of the above. Insurex is here to support you and your teams as we examine these and other challenges faced by individuals and organizations alike.