Economic Brief

Economic Brief

Healthcare and Social Assistance

ECO 100: Principles of Economics

Economic Brief

Healthcare & Social Assistance

The healthcare industry has evolved in the last ten years, and it’s a Trillion-dollar industry. The Health Care and Social Assistance area covers companies supplying health care and social assistance for Americans. There are so many areas that include both health care and social support because it is seldom hard to detect between the lines of these two. Most industries in this field share this commonality of process, specifically, labor data of health practitioners or social workers with the necessary expertise (US Dept. Of Labor). Many of the sectors in the division are determined based on the educational degree held by the practitioners detained in this industry.

Social Assistance is mostly government programs that provide services like job training, housing, childcare, and unemployment help to people with a specific need. It does not include social security and healthcare services like Medicare. In 2018, federal funding for social services is expected to increase, (U.S Industry Reports). Now with healthcare, it produces so much for working-class citizens and non-working-class citizens in the US. Now it is mandatory for everyone to have healthcare in the US. Which means the demand is even higher?

Over the past five years, the Healthcare and Social Assistance in the US industry have grown by 2.6% to reach revenue of $3 trillion in 2018(US Research Industry). The Healthcare and Social Assistance in the US industry consist of Ambulatory health care services, hospitals, nursing homes, and private living facilities as well as social assistance like housing, family counseling, daycare, disability, natural disaster, child welfare, and food services to name a few.

The market in the healthcare and Social Assistance market is pretty simple. Everyone wants to be healthy, but everyone does not have the money to pay for healthcare or Social Assistance. So, the goal of healthcare is expanding health insurance coverage and receiving health care costs. Focusing on health insurance markets are connected to more significant concerns about the price, quality, and

availability of having health care (Austin, D. Andrew). The market formation of the health insurance and Social Assistance industries may have given to rising health care costs and declining access to affordable health insurance and health care.

The market structure of the U.S. health insurance and Social Assistance usually leads to higher prices and regulated output—high premiums and restricted access to healthcare. Employees are the best marketers because, many large employers that offer health insurance benefits to their employees have self-insured, which means they have incentives, like paying for premiums if you need single coverage or paying for deductibles for their employees. It may put some competitive pressure on insurers, although this is unlikely to improve marketing. It will wake them up. Increasing health care costs, play a pivotal role in rising health insurance costs, and that makes it hard for Social Assistance as well because if you do not have healthcare most likely, it’s harder to get social assistance.

The money you spend on staying healthy today will also benefit you in the future. There are many different ways in which spending on health care signifies an investment. For example: In 2003, the private area accounted for over half of national health expenses, with private health insurance contributing the most significant share $600.6 billion or 36 percent (American Hospital Association). Individual out-of-pocket payments, part of private quarter spending, accounted for $230.5 billion or 14 percent of expenses in 2003.

 U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Governments also intrude in healthcare, anyway they can, merely occurring economic issues. Recessions and inflation are part of the real business cycle but, it can have a crushing effect on working and non-working citizens. In these cases, governments meddle through subsidies and misuse of the money supply to lessen the harsh impact of the economic influence on its constituents.

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