Our health care system is going to implode under its own weight. National Health Expenditures are approaching 20 percent of gross domestic product – a figure that is expected to about double over the next half century. Obamacare didn’t start the process, but it’s expediting the job started when Kaiser Shipyards requested permission during World War II to offer health coverage as a fringe benefit. This was further exacerbated in 1965 by the poorly-designed entitlement programs Medicare and Medicaid that 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.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 05/02/2016.
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