Friday, August 04, 2006
Can't afford health insurance?
Well, look at it another way...can you afford NOT to have health insurance?
Consider: 5% of the population is responsible for 48.7% of all spending on health care.
The healthiest half of the American population combines to account for only 3.4%, according to data from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (www.kff.org).
Other interesting data points:
One would expect a Republican congress to require Americans to foot more of the health care via out of pocket costs, copays, and deductibles, combined with private insurance payments. But over the last dozen years or so, what we find is exactly the opposite:
The percentage of prescription drug expenditures coming out of patients' pockets declined steadily between 1994 and 2004, from 43.1% to 24.9.
Meanwhile, the percentage borne by the taxpayer bottomed in 1997 at 21.1%. It began a steady climb to 27.5% in 2004. The percentage borne by private insurers, incidentally, peaked in 2001 at 50%, and declined to 47.6%.
So while overall costs for prescription drug costs have increased, a disproportionate share of that increase has been borne by the government, rather than by the combination of private insurance carriers and consumers themselves.
Government feeds itself.
Splash, out
Jason
Consider: 5% of the population is responsible for 48.7% of all spending on health care.
The healthiest half of the American population combines to account for only 3.4%, according to data from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (www.kff.org).
Other interesting data points:
One would expect a Republican congress to require Americans to foot more of the health care via out of pocket costs, copays, and deductibles, combined with private insurance payments. But over the last dozen years or so, what we find is exactly the opposite:
The percentage of prescription drug expenditures coming out of patients' pockets declined steadily between 1994 and 2004, from 43.1% to 24.9.
Meanwhile, the percentage borne by the taxpayer bottomed in 1997 at 21.1%. It began a steady climb to 27.5% in 2004. The percentage borne by private insurers, incidentally, peaked in 2001 at 50%, and declined to 47.6%.
So while overall costs for prescription drug costs have increased, a disproportionate share of that increase has been borne by the government, rather than by the combination of private insurance carriers and consumers themselves.
Government feeds itself.
Splash, out
Jason
