Everyone knows health care costs are busting us, as individuals and as a nation. Reform is needed, but the question is whether it will come and whether it will do the job.
Here's how bad it has gotten: Medical bills were behind nearly two-thirds of all U.S. bankruptcies in 2007, researchers said in June. And most of those folks were middle class; most were homeowners; most went to college; most had health insurance. And that data came from before the economic downturn.
Our health care system should really be called a "disease care system," says Mohammad Torabi of Indiana University Bloomington's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.
As we've heard, the system is busy trying to stamp out diseases without focusing on the prevention of them, which would've cost a lot less. And with nearly 75 million Americans uninsured or underinsured, according to Dr. Mutaz B. Habal of the Tampa Bay Craniofacial Center, more and more of these folks end up at the emergency room, which is a much costlier way of caring for people than seeing them before their conditions become emergencies.
Spending on U.S. health care was more than $2 trillion in 2006 (that's about $7,026 per resident), almost three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Health care expenditures that year grew at a rate of 6.7 percent, outpacing inflation, the foundation states.
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