Study in the Annals of Family Medicine notes that:
Health insurance for a family will cost as much or more than the annual earnings of half of U.S. households by 2033, if insurance premiums and wages continue to grow at recent rates.
As far as the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a contributor to the failed system.
The PPACA kept intact an insurance-based financing system in which the insurance companies that adjudicate claims and provide some care monitoring and oversight are separated from the entities that deliver the care, such as physicians, hospitals, and ancillary services.
One of the study's authors sums it up.
"We're not bending the cost curve enough," says DeVoe, a family medicine physician and associate professor. "It's an unsustainable system."
The US insurance industry based system is UNSUSTAINABLE. The US system costs 20% of GDP vs. European systems at 10% of GDP while the European systems provide 100% of care to all citizens.
As Dr. DeVoe notes, the US system runs all health care dollars through the insurance industry which provides no health care services, has no health care expertise and imposes a tax of 50% on US health care BEFORE US citizens receive any care.
A crazy, broken system that kills and bankrupts Americans while enriching insurance company stockholders and executives.
It was a travesty that health care was not reformed even after the historic 2008 election largely based on health care reform and giving Democrats the majority tools to achieve real reform such as a public option Medicare for All system that was promised. A failure of leadership.
Health care reform is now off the table in 2012. Both presidential candidates are running away from the issue, both promising more cuts the non-insurance company based part of the US health care system, Medicare and guaranteeing profits and customers to the insurance industry.
The result, working families cannot afford the insurance or health care.