The United State’s Healthcare System has recently been accused of overspending by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Now, this may not be a surprise to most, actually, I would consider that most intelligent people would already know this to be a fact. But, the unsettling analysis from PricewaterhouseCoopers has estimated that we are currently wasting $1,200,000,000,000. (I could have simply stated $1.2 trillion in excess expenses but I thought the zeros would add a nice affect.) Now, we must understand how PwC classifies this waste, it is classified as waste in efficiency. In other words the internal practices of our healthcare system are the reason why we are wasting so much money every single year (and since the cost of healthcare is ever increasing, we are not improving the efficiency of anything we do.) 

            Some would assume that healthcare should know no expense, that’s quite simply put if you can afford it, but for the rest of our country, we should be concerned that our healthcare system is making up a great percentage of our GDP. There are many areas where PwC considers that we are wasting huge sums of money. One area they consider to be a huge waste is what they refer to as ‘behavioral waste.’ They characterize this as the cost of obesity and overweight and it accounts for 17% of the total $1.2 trillion. From my understanding, this would attribute to the additional illness and expenses spent on treating patience that develop their illness primarily because they are overweight or obese. Another strange category in PwC’s audit is labeled as ‘defensive medicine.’ Defensive medicine is defined as treatments or procedures that are ordered to protect doctors from liability and malpractice. Generally, these procedures do not benefit the patient and can even expose the patients to unnecessary risks. Defensive medicine is a loose term and the tests and procedures doctors carry out are not all classified under this term, (which is the reason PwC claims the waste in efficiency ranges from $21 to $210 billion.)

            This should not be a surprise to anyone who has glanced at a newspaper or watched the news in the last 10 years. We are all aware of this growing problem in our country and the presidential elections of 2008 should develop this into a main topic. This, of course is the topic of cutting healthcare costs. The focus on providing healthcare access to more American’s should be viewed as a completely different topic; although I’m sure some politicians will twist and turn their views to make that the focus.