While the Republicans refuse to negotiate on health care legislation, and the Democrats are unable to unite to accomplish necessary reform, the health care costs of the American people are skyrocketing! 🙁
Health care is already 17 percent of the total national budget for all Americans, and is expected to rise to 20 percent in the next decade if nothing is done to contain costs. And this does not even include the millions of Americans who have no health care.
Many health insurance companies are raising their health care premiums in an obscene way, some as much as 35-40 percent. There is no motivation by these companies to promote cost containment to their customers, and this will continue, unfortunately. In other industrial nations, where everyone is covered, the percentage spent on health care is dramatically lower, as in Great Britain, where the cost is seven percent of the total budgetary expenses, as compared to our seventeen percent.
The longer we take to deal with this issue on a national basis, the more we will have millions of Americans thrown off health care by skyrocketing costs, and lives will be lost, as already we know that 45,000 per year are lost due to lack of health insurance coverage.
This is a moral issue, if nothing else, but it is more, as so many lives depend on it, and decent health care costs are essential as the population increases, and more Americans are going without health care coverage.