How the Rising Costs of Health Care Hurts Everyone

Hello, and welcome to this installment of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. In this issue, I found several articles that while having slightly different topics, focused on the problems caused by the ever-rising costs of health care in this country. Rising health care costs make health care less accessible, health insurance more expensive in order to cover it and so on.

Our first article comes from Forbes as is entitled, "Health care access, costs paramount for retirees," in which author Dave Carpenter looks at how the rising cost of health care, as well as misconceptions about how much coverage Medicare actually gives, can hurt retirees trying to live on their savings and retirement plans. According to AARP, "access to affordable quality health care and lifetime economic security are by far the two most important issues for its members and for retirees." Most of these problems and anxieties come from "skyrocketing" costs, the highest per-capita of any nation in the world.

The article also discusses the misconceptions people have about Medicare and how much the government-run plan actually covers. According to a spokesperson again from AARP, he says that Medicare only covers about half of a patient's out-of-pocket expenses, which gives patients a "rude awakening" once they reach sixty-five and expect the plan to cover the entirety of their expenses. Rising health care costs just make the problem worse, and while both presidential candidates have proposed solutions, no one is sure if either of them will work in the long run.

Our next article comes from Newsweek and is entitled, "Getting Real About Health Care," author Robert J. Samuelson discusses how health care should be at the top of the agenda for whoever the new president is. According to the article, we spend $1 on health care for every $6 spent in the U.S., and this could go up to $1 for every $4 spent in the next fifteen years. The article also shows some startling numbers. Apparently the average amount spent on health care, per person, was $4,477 for the poorest fifth of the population and $4,451 for the richest fifth, which is a difference of $26. These numbers go directly in the face of the popular concept that the poor receive less spending on health care.

Apparently, no other sector of our economy spends so much, and part of this is due to the fact government covers the poorest and most elderly in our society, usually putting them in the most costliest portion of the health care system. Even the uninsured add to our high costs of health care. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the uninsured will cost $86 billion in health care costs, which is a number that is way too high. The article states we need more "realism" in health care. The must succinct line in the article states, "What we all want for ourselves and our families-access to unlimited care paid for by someone else-may be ruinous for us as a society." This leads to a dilemma that, according to the author, Americans refuse to recognize. Overall, I thought this was an excellent and thought provoking article that called a lot of realistic problems into question.

Our final article also looks at how rising health care costs affect us. Entitled, "Insurance accessibility could see big changes under the next president," this article in the Tri-Cities Business Review looks at how the two candidates look to overhaul our insurance and health care systems in order to make both more accessible. Both candidates have fairly radical plans to make health insurance more accessible. The article takes a look at both plans, how they differ, and how they might or might not be accepted by the American people.

So overall, we had a good, hard look at how rising health care costs affect and hurt not only our economy, but our personal lives as well. Hopefully our spiraling health care costs can be brought under control in order to make not only health care, but health insurance, more affordable and accessible to anyone who needs it. This concludes our Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. I hope you have enjoyed it and found it informative.