Accounting definitely does not cost as much as the healthcare and legal services. Accounting is the easiest one to outsource at a drastically lower cost, achieving the same services than it is possible in the United States, especially considering the growing speed and ease of electronic communication system worldwide. For example, as an average, the accounting cost for a small business runs around $2,000 annually, which could be drastically reduced for a routine accounting work. This area may not be as critical as the other, but it is an area to be taken into consideration.
The prison system in the U.S. could function at much lower cost, especially by having prisoners with relatively higher incarceration times incarcerated in nations that can provide same level of services and security as within the United States at a tremendously lower cost. The savings could be staggering, considering some of the statistics! According to John Dewar Gleissner, Esq.:
"At the beginning of 2008, 2,319,258 Americans were in prison or jail, more than in any other country in the world, and a greater percentage of our population is in prison and jail than in any other country in the world. At the start of 2009, the total incarcerated population in the United States was 2,424,279. That is just the number behind bars, four times more than are in the U.S. Army, more than Utah in the last census. The United States incarcerates more people than the Russian Federation, South Africa, Mexico, Iran, India, Australia, Brazil, and Canada combined. With 5% of the world's population, the United States has 25% of world's prisoners."
(Source: How Bad is the Crisis in America's Prisons? http://www.corrections.com/news/article/26861-how-bad-is-the-crisis-in-america-s-prisons- )
With regard to cost involved, "prisons cost taxpayers more than $32 billion a year. Every
year that an inmate spends in prison costs $22,000. The cost of a life term averages $1.5 million." (Source: Prison Facts, http://www.heartsandminds.org/prisons/facts.htm )
Until the common sense could prevail in our legal system, finding more effective and less costly ways for punishment, and for instance, not sentence an individual to five years for a $300 theft, which costs the public more than $100,000, we must seriously think about ways to cut the cost of incarceration in the United States; outsourcing would be a welcomed possibility.
Assuming the U.S. military presence or involvement is required around the globe in the future for whatever reasons. The least expensive way would be to hire and train foreign soldiers fighting instead of United States Forces. If the foreign soldiers get killed, the compensation is less expensive. If a soldier is maimed or critically injured and disabled, it is less expensive for the U.S. army to treat them medically in his/her own country of origin, and take care of them otherwise such as financial compensation. To get an idea as to what all is involved, here are some figures:
- US Military personnel killed in Iraq war: 4,754 as of January 28, 2011.
- Cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan: $1,144,166,056,129 ($1.144 trillion) as of January 28, 2011.
The U.S healthcare system can be reformed indefinitely with no end to it! Since powerful interest groups are involved, it would be very difficult to achieve any major improvement, and any effort to reach this goal is time-consuming and costly. However, there could be many opportunity to outsource the medical "cost" without receiving a lower quality service from a low-labor cost nation. There are already arrangements available for practically all types of medical services in this regard. Certainly, there would be no limitation for the business people to exploit this opportunity, especially, when we consider that in 2009, the United States federal, state and local government, corporations and individuals, together spent $2.5 trillion, $8,047 per person on healthcare. This amount represented 17.3% of the GDP; up from 16.2% in 2008.What really demands an increase in outsourcing of healthcare is that the health insurance costs are rising faster than wages or inflation, and in turn, medical causes were cited by about half bankruptcy filers in the United States.
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