Summary question: What factors contribute to the deterioration of the American healthcare system? The healthcare system in the United States is one of the most complex forms of healthcare system. What makes the system complex is that multiple factors are involved. For example, there are multiple players and payers involved in the system. This includes doctors, health service institution administrators, insurance companies, large employers, and ultimately the government (Shi & Singh, 2012). Each of these actors and payers is involved to protect their own economic interest. Hospitals, for example, want to maximize reimbursement from both private and public insurers. Insurance companies and managed care organizations worry about how to maintain their share of the health insurance market, while doctors try to maximize their income and have minimal interference with how they practice medicine (Shi & Singh, 2012). It is obvious that the centrality of the healthcare system does not exist. In other words, there is no department or especially government body that is unilaterally responsible for the administration of the healthcare system like in other developed countries where there is a single payer system, which is the government. Instead, the United States has a private sector-funded healthcare system. According to Shi and Singh (2012), 54% of total healthcare spending is privately financed through employers, while the remaining 46% is financed by the government. The lack of centrality in monitoring total expenditures through global budgets or control over the availability and use of services, combined with the fact that most hospitals and clinics are now privately owned, could potentially... half of document... Reference:Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Retrieved from http://www..Cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-andreports/national Health Expends Data/downloads Proj 2011 pdl.pdf.).Bipartisan Policy Center. (2012). What determines American healthcare spending? The unsustainable growth of healthcare costs in America. Retrieved from http://www. Bipartisanpolicy.orgFeldstein, J. P. (2011). Health policy issues: An economic perspective (5th ed.). Chicago, IL: HAP &AUPHA.Goodman, L. & Norbeck, T. (2013). Who is to blame for rising healthcare costs? Retrieved from http://www. Forbes.comShi, L. & Singh, A.D. (2012). Providing health care in America: A systems approach (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett.Sperling, L. (2010). Price of prescription abuse. Retrieved from http://www. HeraldTribune.com