I wrote yesterday about the Democrats and their plan to make health care available to all Americans – most likely through tax credits and efforts to make health insurance more affordable. The good news on that affordable issue is that health insurance prices are forecast to rise over the next year by the smallest amount since 2001. The bad news? That number is still predicted to be 10.6%. Inflation was 4.28% in 2007. So a 10 percent raise in price will put any commodity more out of reach for the average American.
Joe Paduda has written an excellent article about the reason people are uninsured. And why he doesn’t have a lake-front house. Turns out that very few people just don’t think they need health insurance. One in a hundred, to be precise. The rest are doing their best to juggle their bills – trying to fit health insurance in somewhere, but not always managing to do so. Another 10% price increase next year won’t do anything to help the situation. People are already paying significantly more to put gas in their cars and food on their plates than they were a year ago. It stands to reason that the ranks of the uninsured – 47 million nationwide, and 750,000 right here in Colorado – will be higher a year from now. We better get going on all these ideas that are floating around to lower the cost of health insurance (or to subsidize the premiums through government intervention). Because the problem sure doesn’t seem to be getting better on its own.
