Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Two Divergent Visions; Which is best?, Pt.1 – Time to get it straight.

So what do we have? Will the voters go with Mr. McCain’s tax credit attached to health insurance deregulation or with Mr. Obama’s providing health insurance for tens of millions of, otherwise, uninsured that will remain so, at the expense of requiring some tax redistribution and employers being held responsible for their workers? Amid the many fuzzy areas between the two candidates’ policy issues, health insurance is not one of them. At least on this subject, ordinary voters should find clear and distinct issues to choose from.

With health insurance/care costs rising exponentially over the last few years and tripling the $714 billion spent in 1990, we are now passing the $2.2 trillion that was paid in 2007. Averaging out, we’ve got the average American now spending almost $7,500 per person. This is a staggering 16% of our nation’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product). If that’s not enough, we’ve still got the 46 million Americans without health insurance and 25 million under-insured. These underinsured are unable to make ends meet, many of them facing bankruptcy because of the excessive costs of insurance premiums, deductibles, co-payments and other staggering out-of-pocket medical expenses.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation: As of last spring in a failing economy, as many as 3 of every 10 Americans and families were in a major financial struggle. They are caught up, just trying to cover health insurance/care expenses and other necessary expenses. Now they are in financial straights and unable to cover food, heat and gasoline to get to work. More and more are having to declare bankruptcy.

Continued…