It's not enough that insurance companies try to deny you your medicines and the treatments you need. Nor is it enough that they demand a ton of money ($2000 or even lots, lots more) from you as a deductible before they'll even considering paying out a penny. Now they're gunning for your entire paycheck, as reported in today's Washington Post:
Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have risen faster than incomes in every state in the nation, according to a report released Thursday... analysis of federal data by the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research organization ((showed))
Math is hard, but let's do some anyway. Don't worry, I'll provide the answers.
The District of Columbia had the highest annual total premiums, including both the employer's and the worker's share. In 2010, they averaged $5,644 for a single policy and $15,206 for a family version.
Other states are not far behind.
How much will a family insurance policy cost in ten years? Somewhere between $25,000 and $35,000, as you vary the rate of increase from 5% to 10% per annum. It doesn't take an MIT alum to show you that if health insurance premiums and deductibles keep going up faster than your wages (which have been stagnant), eventually health insurance companies will have all your money.
62 percent of Americans now live in a state in which health insurance premiums equal 20 percent or more of median earnings for adults younger than 65.
There's really only one choice, and the health insurance companies and the medical services industry know it. Full-blown revolution. Somehow the system must be overthrown and we must install a new regime brought in from afar: Canadian, British, Japanese, French, Swedish, Australian or Swiss, it doesn't really matter. Every single one of these health care systems costs bazillions (yes, bazillions, precise to many significant digits) less per capita than our uniquely American broken system. I, for one, would welcome our new Canadians overlords of medical care.
I could show you charts and graphs, tables and fancy graphics. But you've seen it all before, and will see it many times hence. You know, if not from data, then from personal experience, that the cost of health care in this country is obscene and getting more pornographic every day.
But wait! What about the new health care law? You know, the one that the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court are about hand back to President Obama with a giant
UNCONSTITUTIONAL -- SUCKA!
mark stamped all over it?
That report found that the net effect ((of the PPACA)) would be to slow annual premium increases by 1 percent...
You read that correctly. Instead of the insurance comapnies getting your entire paycheck in 2022, the new health care law might delay the complete victory of the one percent -- by slowing increases by one percent -- until, well, 2024! And if it is found unconstitutional? Expect your entire paycheck to be handed over to them even earlier.
Plan accordingly. Long-term stockpiling of catfood and camping equipment are recommended.