September 29, 2008
Time for a health care bailout?
David Kibee writing at the Health Care Blog:
I'm very worried that there is as much excess and greed in health care as there has been exposed in banking and on Wall Street, and that a collapse and bailout is eventually likely, but that we have not reached the crisis point quite yet. But aren't we getting there? Fifty million people are without health insurance, and at least that many are under insured, while revenues going into the industry continue to increase at double digit rates of increase year after year. Medicare Part A, the portion of the fund that pays for hospital expenses for Medicare beneficiaries, went broke this year.
The net yearly shrinkage in employees receiving health care benefits from their employers is between 2 and 3 per cent, and disposable personal income spent for health care has now, for the first time, exceeded the costs of housing, groceries, and clothing for the average American. How can this go on much longer?