Increase in need for health care driving up premiums

For Darrin Lehman, getting healthy has become a high-wire act without a safety net. Unable to afford health insurance for the last six years, he found out he has high cholesterol only when he sold his blood plasma for some extra cash. When he got strep throat last summer, a trip to a local convenient care center cost him $159.  A 39-year-old former Parkland College nursing student, Lehman says he's trying to lower his cholesterol on his own, with diet and exercise.  But he doesn't know how well it's working because he can't afford to see a doctor. "I think it's really a shame that in a country as wealthy as we are, that so many people have to go without insurance," he adds. "I don't understand that." America needs some form of universal health coverage, he says. Even if the system has to offer less, he adds, it might be better than leaving so many people without coverage at all. Spending more Behind the increases in insurance costs are decades' worth of rapidly growing health care spending. In the last 40 years, health care costs have grown much faster than other segments of the economy and eaten up an increasingly larger share of the money Americans spend on goods and services. In the Brady Bunch era of 1970, just over 7 percent of the nation's economic activity was devoted to health care. By 2007 it was up to just over 16 percent. Nine years from now, the federal government projects, health care spending will account for a bit over 20 percent of all economic activity in the U.S. The increases are built into private insurance premiums, the cost of which have steadily outpaced inflation and average worker wages. Last year alone, the cost of employer health insurance premiums rose 5 percent, twice the rate of inflation. Local managed-care executive Jeff Ingrum places a lot of the blame for insurance increases on Uncle Sam. Medicare and Medicaid, the government's health programs for the elderly ...

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Tags: Health Insurance News

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 7:43 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.