If current trends continue, insurance premiums will have doubled from current rates and out of pocket costs will in many cases, exceed those premiums by 2014. Dooming "reform" efforts. (Obama has promised to slow the rate of increase in healthcare costs by an average of 1.2% in each of the ten years, so subtract that reduction in increase rate from the double digit increases) Obama's reform exempts everyone whose income is less than 8% of healthcare costs, so many will be excluded. If catastrophic coverage is all reform becomes, the chronically ill will (surprise!) again be bankrupted by costs very quickly.
Also, in other news, a recent Study Shows ONE QUARTER of prescriptions ALREADY not being filled in Massachusetts because of costs
"Many people whose doctors start them on medications for conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure may never fill those prescriptions, a new study suggests."
"Researchers found that among more than 75,000 Massachusetts patients given drug prescriptions over one year, 22 percent of the prescriptions were never filled. ... Such 'non-adherence,' the study found, was common even among patients prescribed drugs for chronic conditions that can have serious health consequences. Between 28 percent and 31 percent of new prescriptions for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, for example, went unfilled, according to findings published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Some people may not have understood the need for medicines if the health problems had few symptoms--such as heart disease or high cholesterol. In addition, although the study included only people with health insurance, the researchers noted that co-payments for medications may be high or some people may be prescribed a drug not covered" the Reuters story says.
As politicians manuver to satisfy demands by hospitals that they are covered for free riders, and insurers out-patient prescription coverage is often cut.
(Michelle Obama is a hospital administrator)
Newer drugs with fewer side effects are now often not covered adequately by Federal employee health plans as well. Americans pay up to four times what Europeans do for the same drugs, due to cost shifting to us by multinationals constrained elsewhere by single payer systems, and European benefit structures then insulate the patients from direct impact of drug costs.
Study after study shows that increasing co pays costs more in the long run in hospitalizations, still, the politicians have inserted a loophole that means for a rapidly growing millions only catastrophic, sudden illness will be covered. (the compromise that seems to be emerging from Washington will leave millions of chronically ill Americans to fend for themselves, just as was proposed in the beginning of the Obama campaign.)