Our health care system is about to implode under its own weight. National health expenditures are approaching 20 percent of gross domestic product -- a figure that is expected to double over the next half century. Obamacare didn’t start the process, but it’s expediting a problem that started in World War II when Kaiser Shipyards requested permission to offer health coverage as a fringe benefit. This was further exacerbated in 1965 by the poorly-designed entitlement programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which are now draining the Treasury.
Just look at the evidence: health care is unaffordable for most Americans. To have any hope of affording even minor medical procedures, Americans rely on health insurance or public coverage to pay much of the cost. About 88 percent of medical bills are paid for by an entity other than the patient. As a result, health insurance has also become unaffordable. The average employer plan costs American families $17,545 per year. A Bronze plan from the exchange for the average middle-age family costs $12,000 per year with combined annual deductibles of $8,000 to $13,000. Provider networks are so narrow that any major procedure is surely to result in out-of-network charges that can be astronomical.
Arguably, the greatest problem our health care system faces is high costs, rising at more than double the rate of consumer inflation. The price of newer drugs are rising so high, politicians like Hillary Clinton are calling for caps on copays. Of course, capping copays will do nothing to lower the cost; it will merely facilitate further price increases. A New York Times article questioned why a new drug marketed to treat women with low libido comes with a monthly price tag of $800 -- even though the pill hardly works better than a placebo. The reasoning behind charging so much? Because the drug maker, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, assumed health plans would have no choice but to cough up nearly $10,000 per year for women whose doctors prescribed it. Of course, women themselves would never pay $800 per month for a drug whose clinical trials showed it was only correlated with one additional sexual encounter per month in the women taking it. Some of the newest cholesterol drugs cost from $1,500 to $2,000 per month. The latest drugs for rheumatoid arthritis cost even more. New treatments for Hepatitis C cost $60,000 to $90,000 for a course of treatment. Now do you understand why health insurance is so expensive?CARTOONS | MICHAEL RAMIREZ
VIEW CARTOON This is not just a drug problem. Believe it or not, drugs are actually the best bargain in American health care today. But the more egregious examples reflect a growing trend by health care industry stakeholders to jack up revenue any way they can. The strategic plan in the health care industry is to extract as much revenue as possible from third-party payers, because most consumers are both unwilling -- and unable -- to pay those exorbitant amounts unless the costs are hidden from them. Instead, they are forced to pay for them indirectly. It’s a health care gold rush, and employers and insurers are the claims being mined. But it’s ultimately consumers who pay the price, since consumers accept lower wages in return for employee health benefits, pay higher premiums for insurance and pay higher taxes to cover the cost of public programs.
Over the years Americans began to balk and forgo health coverage. Some of this was because they were unwilling to pay exorbitant prices; nearly one-third of the uninsured in 2010 had household incomes above $50,000. Just over half of those had incomes of more than $75,000. An additional one-third of the uninsured likely decided they didn’t have sufficient incomes to afford health coverage and pay their living expenses.
Just look at the evidence: health care is unaffordable for most Americans. To have any hope of affording even minor medical procedures, Americans rely on health insurance or public coverage to pay much of the cost. About 88 percent of medical bills are paid for by an entity other than the patient. As a result, health insurance has also become unaffordable. The average employer plan costs American families $17,545 per year. A Bronze plan from the exchange for the average middle-age family costs $12,000 per year with combined annual deductibles of $8,000 to $13,000. Provider networks are so narrow that any major procedure is surely to result in out-of-network charges that can be astronomical.
Arguably, the greatest problem our health care system faces is high costs, rising at more than double the rate of consumer inflation. The price of newer drugs are rising so high, politicians like Hillary Clinton are calling for caps on copays. Of course, capping copays will do nothing to lower the cost; it will merely facilitate further price increases. A New York Times article questioned why a new drug marketed to treat women with low libido comes with a monthly price tag of $800 -- even though the pill hardly works better than a placebo. The reasoning behind charging so much? Because the drug maker, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, assumed health plans would have no choice but to cough up nearly $10,000 per year for women whose doctors prescribed it. Of course, women themselves would never pay $800 per month for a drug whose clinical trials showed it was only correlated with one additional sexual encounter per month in the women taking it. Some of the newest cholesterol drugs cost from $1,500 to $2,000 per month. The latest drugs for rheumatoid arthritis cost even more. New treatments for Hepatitis C cost $60,000 to $90,000 for a course of treatment. Now do you understand why health insurance is so expensive?CARTOONS | MICHAEL RAMIREZ
VIEW CARTOON This is not just a drug problem. Believe it or not, drugs are actually the best bargain in American health care today. But the more egregious examples reflect a growing trend by health care industry stakeholders to jack up revenue any way they can. The strategic plan in the health care industry is to extract as much revenue as possible from third-party payers, because most consumers are both unwilling -- and unable -- to pay those exorbitant amounts unless the costs are hidden from them. Instead, they are forced to pay for them indirectly. It’s a health care gold rush, and employers and insurers are the claims being mined. But it’s ultimately consumers who pay the price, since consumers accept lower wages in return for employee health benefits, pay higher premiums for insurance and pay higher taxes to cover the cost of public programs.
Over the years Americans began to balk and forgo health coverage. Some of this was because they were unwilling to pay exorbitant prices; nearly one-third of the uninsured in 2010 had household incomes above $50,000. Just over half of those had incomes of more than $75,000. An additional one-third of the uninsured likely decided they didn’t have sufficient incomes to afford health coverage and pay their living expenses.
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