The health care system is in crisis right now. Health care costs have increased substantially over the past few decades and the number of Americans who cannot afford health care coverage is increasing to a crisis level. A national health care system is essential to providing quality and affordable health care for all citizens in the U.S.
From 1990 to 2007 there has been an increase of 1.527 Trillion dollars in health expenditures in the United States. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, the U.S. has gone from 5% spending in health care costs to over 16% in 2007. Public, both state and federal, funding of health care costs have gone from 286.8 Billion in 1990 to 1.035 Trillion in 2007.
” From 1965 to 2007, health spending as a percent of GDP has increased steadily from 5.9 percent to 16.2 percent, roughly an average of 0.25 percentage point per year” (National Health Care Expenditures Data, 2009). The average cost for health care, per person in the United States, has gone from an average of $3,783 in 1995 to $7,498 in 2007, an increase of 77% in just twelve years. “The White House describes the high cost of health care as “one of the biggest drains on American pocketbooks” (Pear, 2007). The number of people that have no health insurance at all is estimated to be in excess of 46 million people (nchc.org, 2009) and that number is steadily increasing as more people lose their jobs and subsequently their employer provided health care benefits.
With the facts listed above it is quite evident that more and more Americans can no longer afford health care coverage. As taxpayers, Americans are already paying for increased health care costs as more and more Americans can no longer afford health care premiums and ultimately go uncared for or are subsidized by the American taxpayers in terms of higher premiums and out of pocket costs. “Since 1999, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 120 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 44 percent and cumulative wage growth of 29 percent during the same period” (Nchc.org, 2009). “…46 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens” (nchc.org, 2009). “Health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.” (Nchc.org, 2009), and these are countries that have a national health care system.
All Americans are affected by the rising costs of health care but the ones who pay the most, in terms of lack of proper care, are the Americans that cannot afford to pay for, or who cannot obtain adequate coverage due to an illness. “It is unacceptable for hard-working Americans to go without affordable health care. As members of a community, we have a moral obligation to guarantee that our fellow Americans have health insurance so they can access quality, life-enhancing care when they need it” (The Case for Health Reform, 2009). Currently, the insurance providers use a risk-based business model in order to price premiums for coverage, essentially, “…they practice charging higher premiums to sick people…” (Pear, 2009). If one was to imagine that a family member is diagnosed with some type of cancer or has a heart attack and you either have minimal or no health insurance there is no way that our current system would provide for the proper care of your family member. If, in fact, they were able to recover partially or even make a full recover, then they would essentially be uninsurable under the current system as in our system “Insurers make money by separating us from one another and charging different amounts to different groups, based on their health risk…that is socially unproductive…Insurers should make money not by excluding the sick, but by helping them get better care” (Pear, 2009).
The private health care industry is, of course, opposed to any type of government-run health care plan. These insurance companies are, obviously, in business to make money and, although they have made concessions over the past few months, “Insurers remain staunchly opposed to creation of a government-run health insurance plan” (Pear, 2009). One of their concessions, now states, that “…it is willing to end the practice of charging higher premiums to sick people if Congress adopted a comprehensive plan requiring all Americans to carry insurance” (Pear, 2009). Here lies the primary opposition to a national health care system; “conservatives, health insurers, health care providers and others see it as a slippery slope to a single payer system because, they contend, the government’s built in advantages will allow it to unfairly squash competitors” (Washington Post, 2009), however, their arguments are easily disputed. In “2003 Medicare law allowed the government to establish a prescription drug plan in an geographic area with fewer than two private plans. But insurers, seeing a lucrative business opportunity, rushed into the market, and the government never had to establish a plan of its own” (Pear, 2009), this is a prime example of how a competitive market works. Of course private insurance companies are willing to make more concessions as it is now becoming overwhelmingly evident that the current administration has the necessary votes to make a national health care system a reality so they will do what they can to negotiate health care reform that is short of having a national health care system.
The mentioning of the health care insurers willing to soften their stance on “their rate setting policy” (Pear, 2009) comes with a caveat…”Congress should require all Americans to have coverage” (Pear, 2009), that is a huge burden that is probably not even realistic unless health care costs are reduced substantially to a level that everyone could afford. Under the current system “Rising health care costs place increasing strain on state and local budgets and threaten the sustainability of the Medicare and Medicaid programs” (Case for Health Care Reform, 2009).
It has taken an enormous increase in health care costs over the period of even the last ten years and the threat of a national health care system for the private insurance companies to come to terms with the fact that they will need to make concessions in order to avoid the potential competition from a government sponsored program. ” As Americans, we have a moral responsibility to our communities and an economic obligation to the U.S. economy to create a more sustainable health system that performs at the highest level for us all” (The Case for Health Care Reform, 2009). The primary assumptions that the White House and Congress are operating on is that “…if everyone had health insurance, it would be easier to control costs…and…the nation could sharply reduce growth of health care spending if doctors made less use of aggressive treatments that raise costs but do not result in better outcomes” (Pear, 2009). These two assumptions are key in getting the private insurers to find ways to reduce health costs and find ways to insure the currently “uninsurable” by their current practices. It is currently estimated that ” By 2035, health care spending will account for more than 30 percent of U.S.GDP—double its current share of 15 percent” (The Case for Health Reform, 2009), with that type of increase our nation would simply jeopardize our financial stability and force the nation to cut spending in other critical areas.
This is an issue that is simply not going away. It was an issue back during the Clinton Administration and one in which, during the Presidential Election in 1996, Bob Dole stated “… in the Republican response to Mr. Clinton’s State of the Union address in 1994, “Our country has health care problems, but no health care crisis.” (Pear, 2009), that may have been the case back in 1996, however, that is simply not the case today. If the private insurance companies recognize that there is a need for changes in the health care system then, quite clearly, our nation must be in a health care crisis. If we were not then they would be more than happy to sustain our current system, however, as more and more Americans have come forward, voted to place a democratically controlled House and Senate and a Democratic President, they are now realizing that the American people will no longer stand for sub-standard health care and spiraling health care costs.
With the past increases in health care costs, the inability for the sick and the poor to get health care, and the projected increases in health care costs over the next few years, it is imperative that the United States finally put together a national health care system which will provide adequate health care for all citizens, not just those that can afford it. The private sector insurance companies have had decades to reduce health care costs and find a way to provide health care to everyone, they have failed. It is now time for them to adjust their business to plan to compete with a national health care plan. A national health care system is essential to providing quality and affordable health care for all citizens in the United States, we deserve it and we need it.
References
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Health Care Expenditure Data, HHS.Gov web site, Last updated March 11, 2009,. several publications.
- Health Care Reform, Robert Pear, The New York Times, Published April 1, 2009, one page, Nytimes.com.
- The Case for Health Reform – The Moral, Economic, &Quality Motives for Action, Health
- Reforming Health Care Delivery System: A Team Approach, Health Cast, Kaiser Permanente, Published March, 27 2009, on Kaisernetwork.org.
- Options for Expanding Health Insurance Coverage and Controlling Costs, Congressional Budget Office, Testimony before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, published February 25th, 2009.
- Democrats Agree on a Health Plan; Now Comes the Hard Part, Robert Pear, New York Times, published March 31, 2009.
- Insurers Offer to Soften a Key Rate-Setting Policy, Robert Pear, New York Times, published March 24th, 2009.
- http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
Tags: Health Reform, healthcare, reform