Health care is a tremendous boon to a few wealthy CEO's in the industry, one of the largest source of jobs for the middle class and an incredible burden for the rest of us. With insurance companies finding every way to cut costs and subsequently the level of care for the consumer, people are taking on large amounts of debt to pay for their medical bills. The way things are going, they will be getting much worse, to the tune of $4.1 trillion a year by 2016.
From Forbes.com:
Health spending in 2006 was projected at $2.1 trillion, or 16 percent of the GDP.
"There is a relatively modest and stable projection for 2006 to 2016, with an average growth rate of 6.9 percent," John Poisal, deputy director of the National Health Statistics Group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said during a Tuesday teleconference. He noted that with projected growth rates falling slightly in 2006 and 2007, "that would result in five consecutive years of slowing growth."
But the projected decelerations didn't impress outside experts.
"We haven't solved the health-care cost problem," stated Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund. "There was a lot of feeling when the 2006 numbers came out and we were growing at about 7 percent a year, that maybe it wasn't a continuing problem. But, I think even growing at 7 percent a year you see that by 2016 we are going to be spending 20 percent of the nation's economy on health care. I think it says we've got to get serious about doing something that really improves the efficiency of the health-care system and not just shifting money."
The cost of Medicare is also steadily rising, nearing the one trillion dollar mark by 2016. The problem is that President Bush wants to cut funding for Medicare and other related health care programs to pay for more important things, like giving the Walton family a 32 billion dollar tax cut. Shocked at such an assertion? Just remember, people like the Waltons are his base.
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