Health Care - Update 2008
The National Coalition on Health Care sums up U.S. Health
Care nicely.
Some sobering facts are:
“The United States spends the most money on medical care of all advanced industrialized countries, but it performs more poorly than most on many measures of health care quality.
There are widespread problems with the quality of much of America's health care. The disparity between the care most Americans receive and the care delivered through what are considered the nation’s best-managed care plans results in nearly 75,000 preventable deaths annually. Billions of dollars in lost productivity and in hospital costs could be averted through more consistent delivery of evidence-based best practices in medical services and administrative practices.
Health care spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense.
Significant increases in
health care costs and in health insurance premiums are affecting Americans
personally and profoundly — and have become a major national economic problem.
Annual health care
spending in the U.S. is $2.3 TRILLION in 2007, and is projected to reach $4.2
TRILLION or 20% of our nation’s GDP by 2016. Health Care has been increasing two to five times the rate
of inflation since 2000. These increases translate into high and rapidly
escalating health insurance costs for businesses and families. Over the past
five years, employers, on average, have experienced double digit increases in
their health insurance premiums.
The annual premium that a
health insurer charges an employer for a health plan covering a family of four
averaged $12,100 in 2007. Workers contributed nearly $3,300, or 10 percent more
than they did in 2006. The annual premiums for family coverage significantly
eclipsed the gross earnings for a full-time, minimum-wage worker ($10,712).
These substantial
increases — year after year — are making it more difficult for businesses to
continue health coverage for employees and retirees. Employers, on average,
have seen their health insurance premiums increase nearly 100 percent since
2000.
The increases in
healthcare spending are making it much more difficult for individuals and
families to pay their share of the cost of employer-sponsored coverage or to
buy health insurance themselves. It is no coincidence that the number of
Americans without health coverage has been climbing with nearly 9 million
people losing their coverage between 2000 and 2006.
Surging health care costs slow the rate of job growth by
making it more expensive for companies to add new workers. They also suppress
wage increases for current workers by driving up total compensation costs.
As health care costs rise, corporate operating margins
are cut, which reduces the capacity of firms to grow by investing in research,
plant and equipment.
High and escalating out-of-pocket costs are forcing
families to delay mortgage payments or sell their homes, cut back on normal
household expenses such as for food and utilities, and take on onerous medical
debt.
High medical costs can require retired families to spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars out of their savings for out-of-pocket health
care expenses.
High insurance costs are eroding the ability of firms to
fund current levels of pension and health benefits.
They put American firms at a steep disadvantage in world
markets, where they have to compete against companies with much lower health
care costs in the nations where they operate.
Rapidly escalating costs are producing severe long-term
budgetary problems in the public sector affecting the solvency of federal and
state health insurance programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
We have reached the point where the public’s main
domestic concerns — the economy,
jobs, and health care — are really one and the same issue. Unless
the health care cost crisis is addressed, we cannot assure robust economic
growth, strong job creation, or financial security for American families.
The Coalition has developed a set of fact sheets that
point out the impact of rapidly escalating health care costs and insurance
premiums on various aspects of our national economy.
The fact sheets listed below can be found at www.nchc.org
in “Facts About Health Care”
Effects o n Workers and
Their Families
Effects on Business
Operations
Effects on Pension Programs
and Beneficiaries
The only real, viable solution is personal responsibility and prevention! Why do we continually live in “Disney Land” anD expect our government will solve the problem.
Darrell L. Tanelian, M.D., Ph.D.
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