America faces a serious problem. It concerns anyone requiring the service of a physician and paying for health insurance, which means everyone. Over the past few years, the nation has begun experiencing a shortage in health care workers (doctors, nurses, dentists, etc) and an increase in health care costs.
In 2014, it’s predicted that this shortage in health workers will become severe. A large population of current physicians will be retiring very soon. Furthermore, because of the advanced technology being introduced, current physicians aren’t equipped with the training or knowledge to use this technology. Additionally, the generation of physicians currently being trained is far too small. There’s not enough new health care workers to replace the retiring ones.
To worsen an already terrible situation, the health care expenses are increasing. The advanced technology, though providing high quality care, is not exactly inexpensive. In order to offset the costs for this technology, insurance companies have been charging their customers higher premiums.
Not many young people understand the true extent of this situation. For a student such as myself, as well as others in the York Suburban School District, this problem exists in and seriously affects our lives.
I’ll explain this complicated situation very, very simply: my little brother was six years old when he was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition, called ITP or Immune/Idio Thrombocytic Purpura. That’s a complicated way of saying that the doctors didn’t know anything about his condition. In fact, all that diagnosis truly revealed was that my brother bruised easily and became ill frequently.
When I interviewed my mother, her answers revealed a lot more information about the subject. She’s been experiencing the hardships of the health worker shortage for several years now. In fact, a point she often stressed seemed to be the shortage of nurses: “There’s a high turnover of nurses in big cities. The doctors are appointed one nurse to ensure that prescriptions are filled, but we haven’t seen the same nurse twice.”
Furthermore, the nurses working each time often appeared “stressed” and seemed to “lack experience.” When she explained the details of her comments further, she said, “I’ve had this happen three, four times with Noah with his allergy doctor. His nurse called in the wrong doctor and provided the wrong information about Noah from another patient’s chart.” Not only do nurses seem in short supply, the ones provided don’t seem entirely prepared for their careers either.
So, even though we’re young students and don’t think that the shortage of health care workers and increasing healthcare costs will affect us, it will eventually. We all need doctors and nurses to ensure that we lead long, healthy lives; what will happen when we don’t have enough?