Good health is one of the things that every person puts on the top of priority lists. Healthcare costs however have become so high nowadays that many businesses are cutting back on health insurances that they provide to employees. As a result, many families are on their way to cut back on basic necessities like food, electricity, shelters and even homes, just to cover health needs.
Healthcare system is said to be plagued by different inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. Such are the contributors to the growing costs of medical care associated with government health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
It has been projected that the national spending will reach $2.5 trillion in 2009, and by 2018, national health care expenditures are expected to reach $4.4 trillion, more than double 2007 spending! This does not generally look good considering that spending on healthcare is also expected to increase at a faster rate than the GDP. While the GDP is presumed to increase at 4.1 percent per year, Healthcare spending grows at 6.2 percent.
At the same time, this makes it also difficult for businesses to provide health insurances to their employees. In fact, there has been a-1 percent increase in this area. Health care insurance premiums raised four times the rate of inflation and wage increases during the last decade. Employees are having difficulties to afford coverage themselves.
Healthcare insurance premiums are already close to $13,400 a year for a household of four. In general, employer health insurance costs overtook profits in 2008, and the gap grows steadily.
People are in search for more affordable health
insurance, and if they can not find one, they would rather go uninsured. Rising healthcare costs are explained by the drops in health insurance coverage. This means that more and more people are choosing not to be insured because of high and escalating costs of health insurance coverage. Alarmingly, there are about 1.5 million families losing their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.
These are the reasons why the country's healthcare system is in dire need of reforms. The greatest impacts if reforms are not implemented would be felt by small businesses. They will pay nearly $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years in health care costs for their workers. With this, 178,000 small business jobs are doomed to be diminished by 2018.
Author Resource:
If you are having trouble choosing the right type of medical insurance, then, log on to Insurancecaredirect. Here you will find information on all aspects of health insurance including low cost health insurance options.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")