The issue of how much Healthcare or Health Insurance Costs in USa

Healthcare or Health Insurance Costs are rising in the USA.

How about a Flat Rate Solution for Healthcare Costs and Payment?

1) The current average for health insurance is $13,000 per year for a family of four.

That is 1,083 per month. That is a house payment!

2) The current median family income makes $50,000 per year.

That is 4,117 per month. That is one 1/4 of the monthly income!

3) WHAT WOULD BE THE AMOUNT THAT WE COULD REQUIRE EVERYONE TO PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE? How about a car payment a month?

The average USA car payment is $378 over 63 months. The average family car payment is about $560 per month. The advice for buying cars is NOT TO DO MORE THAN 13% of your income in car payments per year... for $30,000 that is $325 per month or $3,900 per year ... for $50,000 that is $542 per month or $6,500 per year.

Why 13% of your income: Let’s say that you invested $378 every month, instead of making car payments from age 30 to age 65 (35 years). If you average a rate of return of 12 percent (which was doable), your money will grow to $2.4 million. Do you still want that car?

However that tells you that the Health Insurance company is making money!

4) Hey look at my Doctor's bill for last week: I was charge $488 for a doctor's visit and a complete set of lab work... AFTER THE 30% DISCOUNT for paying with CREDIT CARD OR CASH. $400 a month is what I should be paying in health insurance/health care or $4,800 a year. I just need a job paying $39, 923 a year to pay for it and the car.

Healthcare or Health Insurance should cost USa 13% of their income per month per person, with your taxes making up the difference to equal $400 per month person to a public or private healthcare insurer.

If you make $13 a hour, you should be paying $1.70 for heathcare ($304 per month). If you are making $7 a hour, you should be paying 91 cents for heathcare per hour ($168 per month) If you make $50 a hour, you should be paying $6.50 for healthcare per hour ($1,170 per month).

At the current rate the average cost of healthcare will increase by 300% if we DON'T DO ANYTHING.





WASHINGTON - A national advocacy group says health insurance premiums rose five times faster than earnings in Illinois from 2000 to 2009.

The report released Thursday says, on average, the annual insurance premium for a family paid by employers and workers rose from $7,220 to $13,397. That's an increase of nearly 86 percent.

The workers' portion rose at an even steeper pace.

Meanwhile, the median earnings of Illinois workers rose just 17 percent, from $26,806 to $31,414.

The report comes from Families USA, a group working to expand health care coverage. The group based its findings on federal data.

Congress is considering several bills that aim to restrain costs. But benefits consultants have said if any reform is passed this year, it won't have a major effect for a few years.

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On the Net: http://www.familiesusa.org/

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Facts on the Cost of Health Insurance and Health Care

Health care spending continues to rise at a rapid rate forcing businesses to cut back on health insurance coverage and forcing many families to cut back on basic necessities such as food and electricity and, in some cases, shelters and homes.

Experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems increase the cost of medical care associated with government health programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and health insurance for employers and workers and affect the security of families.



National Health Care Spending

National health spending is expected to reach $2.5 trillion in 2009, accounting for 17.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). By 2018, national health care expenditures are expected to reach $4.4 trillion—more than double 2007 spending.1

National health expenditures are expected to increase faster than the growth in GDP: between 2008 and 2018, the average increase in national health expenditures is expected to be 6.2 percent per year, while the GDP is expected to increase only 4.1 percent per year. 1

In just three years, the Medicare and Medicaid programs will account for 50 percent of all national health spending. 1

Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. In addition, the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund that pays for physician services and the prescription drug benefit will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that will grow substantially faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time. 2

According to one study, of the $2.1 trillion the U.S. spent on health care in 2006, nearly $650 billion was above what we would expect to spend based on the level of U.S. wealth versus other nations. These additional costs are attributable to $436 billion outpatient care and another $186 billion of spending related to high administrative costs. 3

Employer and Employee Health Insurance Costs

Over the last decade, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased 119 percent. 4

Employees have seen their share of job-based coverage increase at nearly the same rate during this period jumping from $1,543 to $3,354.4

The cumulative increase in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have raised at four times the rate of inflation and wage increases during last decade. This increase has made it much more difficult for businesses to continue to provide coverage to their employees and for those workers to afford coverage themselves.4

The average employer-sponsored premium for a family of four costs close to $13,000 a year, and the employee foots about 30 percent of this cost.4

Health insurance costs are the fastest growing expense for employers. Employer health insurance costs overtook profits in 2008, and the gap grows steadily. 5

Total health insurance costs for employers could reach nearly $850 billion by 2019. Individual and family spending will jump considerably from $326 billion in 2009 to $550 billion in 2019.6

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that job-based health insurance could increase 100 percent over the next decade.7 Employer-based family insurance costs for a family of four will reach nearly $25,000 per year by 2018 absent health care reform.7

The Impact of Rising Health Care Costs

Economists have found that rising health care costs correlate with significant drops in health insurance coverage, and national surveys also show that the primary reason people are uninsured is due to the high and escalating cost of health insurance coverage.8

A recent study found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were linked to medical expenses. Of those who filed for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance.9

According to another published article, about 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.10

Without health care reform, small businesses will pay nearly $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years in health care costs for their workers, 178,000 small business jobs will be lost by 2018 as a result of health care costs, $834 billion in small business wages will be lost due to high health care costs over the next ten years, small businesses will lose $52.1 billion in profits to high health care costs and 1.6 million small business workers will suffer “job lock“— roughly one in 16 people currently insured by their employers.11

References

1. Siska, A, et al, Health Spending Projections Through 2018: Recession Effects Add Uncertainty to The Outlook Health Affairs, March/April 2009; 28(2): w346-w357.
2. A Summary of the 2009 Annual Reports, Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, 2009.
3. McKinsey & Company, Accounting for the Cost of U.S. Health Care – A New Look on Why Americans Spend More. McKinsey & Company, 2007
4. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. September 2008.
5. McKinsey and Company. The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, “Will Health Benefit Costs Eclipse Profits,” September, 2004 and updated by Eric Jensen, Senior Fellow, McKinsey and Company at National Coalition on Health Care Forum on National Health Care Reform and Its Potential Impacts on New York, May 27, 2009.
6.Health Reform: The Cost of Failure. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, May 2009.
7. Congressional Budget Office, “Taxes and Health Insurance,” February 29, 2008.
8. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The Uninsured: A Primer, Key Facts About Americans without Health Insurance. 2009. April 2009.
9. Himmelstein, D, E., et al, “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study, American Journal of Medicine, May 2009.
10. Robertson, C.T., et al. “Get Sick, Get Out: The Medical Causes of Home Mortgage Foreclosures,” Health Matrix, 2008.
11. The Economic Impact of Healthcare Reform on Small Business, Small Business Majority, June 2009.

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http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml