BMES 340

Week 1:
No class next week 1/16
Group 4
TA: Claire Witherel cwitherel@drexel.edu
Access, cost, and quality three main components
o Access used to mean how far away one was from a hospital
o In the US today, if you cant pay for health care, its not to say you wont receive
care, you just wont receive the same level of access as others who can afford it
WW2, industries tried stealing workers from other industries by offering higher wages.
Wage control law was passed that said you cant offer higher wager so industries offered
health care

Health Care
A service? A product? A commodity?
Something everyone has or will use multiple times during a life time.
It comprises 17.8% of the US GDP
In 2015 it grew 5.8% to the present level
It = 3.2 trillion dollars
Or $9,990 capita

Country 1995 2015

US 3788 9990
UK 1364 3935
Germany 3129 5411
India 16 75
Ireland 239 4239

Access issues are many and varied depending on geography, availability of appropriate
practitioner, and other.
Indeed, since the start of the ACA the percentage of persons w/o HI has fallen from
16.6% to 10% of non-elderly Americans
Meaning that 29 million Americans are still uninsured.