Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

The Health Insurance/care Pickle, Pt.2 -–  The basic outlook.

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Ms. Wilensky notes that polls show less concern over health insurance/care with the Republicans than with the Democrats. Even Mr. McCain was quoted last week as saying "…some of the minor items like health care plans." Obama, on the other hand has pledged that health insurance/care reform would be a main agenda. Only the war in Iraq would take precedent. The Harvard economist, David Cutler is the Democratic candidate’s advisor.

David has already spent the last 15 years working for health insurance/care-system change and brings a rich sense of health economics to the table. Mr. Cutler has a lot to say about the current state of affairs our nation’s health insurance/care-system. He states "It is really bad and getting worse. It is dysfunctional and falling apart." The people of our country are already spending twice as much per person on health insurance/care as the rest of the developed world is. And, to boot, the care we get isn’t as good. We ”often have more trouble seeing doctors, are the victims of more errors and go without treatment more often,” as Mr. Cutler puts it.

Statistics provided by the nonprofit group called the Commonwealth Fund researched and found that the average health care expense per capita in this country last year was $6,697. That more than doubles the amounts spent by our neighbors in Canada. They only have to spend $3,326 per capita, which comes out to be 9.8% of their GDP. According to Mr. Cutler, there are three vital areas for a health insurance/care-system. He advises “…you need to”:

1) Cover everyone with health insurance.

2) “Improve the value of what you're getting for what you spend.”

3) “Have a public health system that actually works.”

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