Unless you’ve been living under a rock, there’s no way you could have missed the marches, the protests, and the Town Hall meetings discussing whether or not we should reform healthcare, and if so, to what extent.

Now this is a fitness and health site, not a political one, so I really don’t want to get into the many, many arguments for and against the various proposals that have been promoted and discussed by both sides of the political aisle.  However, I do want to bring up one important point:  we really cannot afford to sit around and do nothing.

The reason why is summed up in a recent report titled, “Health Reform: The Cost of Failure” by The Urban Institute, a bipartisan think tank that studies social issues.  Here’s what it says…

The May 2009 study looked at what would happen to trends in health coverage and costs if healthcare reforms are not enacted, in other words, if we do nothing.  It’s not a pretty picture.

Using a computer simulation model, the Urban Institute looked at the current trends in insurance coverage and health costs and projected them out 10 years in the future for each of the 50 states.  Here’s a summary of what they found:

• There should be no surprise that of all income levels affected, the middle-class would be hardest hit with individual and family out-of-pocket costs increasing by more than 35%.
• In 29 states, the number of people without insurance would increase by more than 30%.  All told, the number of uninsured Americans would reach 65.7 million.
• Businesses would see their premiums continue to increase with it more than doubling in 27 states.
• Every state would see a smaller share of it’s population with employer-sponsored insurance.  (Why is that?  See the previous bullet point.)
• Every state would see its Medicare/CHIP spending rise by more than 75% by 2019 with half the states facing increases of more than 100%.
• The amount of uncompensated care – this is the cost of treating people with no health insurance and a cost that we ALL pay for in one way or another – would more than double in 45 states.

Like I said, it’s not a pretty picture, and in my opinion, a big reason for getting some sort of reform passed.  Again, I don’t want to debate the specific proposals that have been put on the table.  I just want to re-enforce the point that we can’t afford to do nothing.

As a small business owner, I’ve personally seen the cost of providing medical insurance for our employees go up significantly over the past 3 years.  At first, our premiums went up around 10% from the previous year (no real change in the number of employees or number of claims).  Now, our premiums have jumped 35% from the previous year – again with no real change in the number of employees or in the number of claims.

“No problem, you say.  All you have to do is to pass that additional cost to your customers, right?” Sorry, it doesn’t work that way – not in the middle of a recession.  There’s too much competition, many of which don’t provide any insurance at all for their employees, willing to do the same job for less.  It doesn’t take you long to realize that things have got to change.

No matter which way your political beliefs lean, no matter which news network you watch, no matter what the radio talk show hosts say, the way we insure and pay for healthcare has simply got to change.

Again, you can download the Urban Institute’s report here.

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy

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