Against Consensus

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2215825/pagenum/all/#p2

Against Consensus
Why the most politically radical health care solution is also the most fiscally conservative.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, April 10, 2009, at 6:16 PM ET


Please take a minute out of whatever you're doing to look at this bar graph:

Chart from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Chart from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Stunning, isn't it? What this demonstrates is that even before the bottom fell out of the economy, almost nobody in the United States got a real raise during the Bush years. Between 1999 and 2008, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums increased six times faster than wages. Average employer contributions to family health care plans more than doubled, and so did average worker contributions to those plans. Whatever pay increases the average worker received were wiped out, and then some, by the rapidly growing amounts deducted from his paycheck to cover health insurance. That's assuming he was lucky enough to be among the 59 percent of the U.S. population that received employment-based health insurance. (Fifteen percent have no health insurance at all. The other 26 percent either buy their own health insurance or get it through government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.) These calculations don't take into account the rising cost of actually using ever-pricier health coverage. During the same period, deductibles tripled.

Health care costs have spiraled out of control. That, in a nutshell, is why Congress and the Obama administration must enact health care reform.

big snip-worth reading//

If you really want to rein in health care costs, then consensus reform options like creating a comparative effectiveness board won't get you very far. For the true spending hawk, I see no practical alternative to the "socialist" public option.

[ms liberty]

1. K&R n/t

[annabanana]

2. It's the fiscally responsible thing to do!

Right there in dollars & cents..no denying it!

[daleanime]

3. There are so many reasons it has to be done...

and only l for why it will not be - Profit.:argh:

[progressoid]

4. I hate graphs and charts like this.

Two blocks of color with no statistics.

Christ, we learned in elementary school how to label a graph properly.

[babylonsister]

5. They are pretty telling, but you are right. There's much more to it

than this graph.