An Analysis of Health Care Costs and Proposed Remedies

The Kaiser website has an informative article which breaks down health care costs in the United States. Also included is a section detailing the factors which are driving up the cost of health care. Once you are aware of costs and causes for their increases cost containment proposals can be made and analyzed. This article is an excellent place to start when searching for solutions to America's health care conundrum.

Conspicuously missing from the analysis is tort driven costs. They are hard to quantify because their expression takes the form of excessive diagnostic testing. Still some effort needs to be made to estimate the cost of practicing defensive medicine and the high cost to physicians of liability insurance.

Bedrock Obama Care Assumptions Proven Wrong

The health care legislation passed since Obama became president was made possible based on assumptions about costs which now have been proven erroneous. The Coming Obamacare Deficits tells the story. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made cost assessments that aided the passing of Obama Care. But in May of this year, following the bill's passage, the CBO found unaccounted for discretionary spending valued at $115 billion. At that point the CBO director reversed the prior message and expressed the view that rising health costs would greatly pressure federal budgets during the coming decades. And then on June 25th anticipated Medicare cuts were cancelled thus consigning to oblivion basic cost saving measures upon which Obama Care was established.

Also in the same article was the disturbing revelation that health inflation was more than double the inflation rate at 3.4 percent last year. Worse yet cost increases experienced by Medicare and Medicaid were up 8.6 percent and 9.9 percent respectively.