Medical Costs

People have complained that I haven ' t said why Medicine is costing so much in the U S of A. Give me a break -- I can ' t talk about everything at once. I ' ve been intending to get to this all along. This is just the first installment, it ' s a long story.So, thanks to all the mind boggling complexities of employer-provided insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and a few other programs, something like 90% of Americans have some form of health insurance. Great news! That means we can all afford the medical services we need and nobody has to go broke because they get sick or are injured in a car crash or by somebody exercising their Second Amendment rights! Err, no. Sadly it does not mean that. In the first place, for the 50% of people who get their insurance through employment, it ’s costing them more and more for the premiums – by three times the rate of inflation, since 1999, as shown below.   With that, plus deductibles, copays/coinsurance, denial of services, coverage limits, and uncovered services, overall, spending by middle income families on health care increased by 25% from 2007 to 2014, while spending on other necessities declined.What is more, four out of ten insured adults surveyed in 2023 said they had skipped or delayed some type of care in the past year, and one in six said they had problems paying medical bills. According to an investigation by KFF, more than 100 million Americans – 41% of adults – have debts for medic...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs