Americans Pay $2.5 Trillion for Health Care That Cost $912 Billion in 2003

[Purveyor]

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- The last time a president tried to overhaul U.S. health care, Americans were spending $912 billion on the system and 40 million were uninsured. Today they’re spending $2.5 trillion and almost 50 million lack coverage.

President Barack Obama’s effort to revamp the system faces resistance from lawmakers of both parties who warn that the more than $1 trillion cost of the plan will break the budget at a time when the government already faces record deficits.

“Despite what President Obama claims, the bill he is promoting today will make health care even more expensive,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said last week when the president visited Boehner’s home state of Ohio.

The experience of the 15 years since Bill Clinton failed to win passage of legislation suggests that the price of inaction may be even higher than the cost of Obama’s plan.

Congress refused to touch the issue for a decade after the collapse of Clinton’s 1994 bid. A similar outcome this year would likely add millions to the ranks of the uninsured, boost costs for businesses and workers, and do nothing about what may be the top threat to the government’s long-term fiscal health, proponents of the plan argue.

“The budgetary implications of doing nothing are continued exponential growth in health-care costs, a steadily increasing health-care share of GNP, an eventual bankruptcy of the Medicare trust fund, and health-care costs becoming a prohibitive share of the federal budget,” Lawrence Summers, head of the National Economic Council, said in an interview.

Soaring Costs

Health-insurance premiums for families have risen 119 percent since 1999, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Menlo Park, California-based policy-research firm. Inflation has risen 28.5 percent over that period, according to the Labor Department.

MORE...

BLOOMBERG: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ac_Ad5Car70M

[KansDem]

1. That's okay; We're paying $3,000,000,000,000 for a war that was only suppose to cast $60,000,000,000

We're chumps!

Perhaps we should change our name to "Americhumps" :silly: I'm proud to be an Americhump!

The best and the brightest my ass!

[avaistheone1]

4. lol and to listen to the blue dog democrats and republicans carry on that their fiscal conservatives

What a joke!!!!!!!!

[nolabels]

9. I hate living in country that resembles a book of satire

(snip)
One night, as Winston lies dreaming in his cell, he suddenly wakes, yelling: "Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!", whereupon O'Brien rushes in and doesn't question him, and then sends him to Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love. Here a person's greatest fear is forced upon him or her for the final re-education step: acceptance. Winston, who has a primal fear of rats, is shown a wire cage filled with starving rats and told that it will be fitted over his head like a mask, so that when the cage door is opened, the rats will bore into his face until it is stripped to the bone. Just as the cage brushes his cheek, he shouts frantically: "Do it to Julia!" The torture ends and Winston is returned to society, brainwashed to accept Party doctrine. During the brainwashing, it is noted that O'Brien somehow was always aware of what Smith was thinking and in a way was reading his mind. It can be interpreted as either the Thought Police had devised a mechanism of reading people's thoughts or O'Brien understood Smith completely and was able to predict his chain of thought perfectly.
(snip)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

[SleeplessInAlabama]

5. We spent $14 billion on a $6 billion bridge.

It is a uniquely American trait to pay out the ass for everything and just accept it.

[nc4bo]

2. Disgusting.

I'd love to see a couple tv commercials use those numbers in a healthcare reform ad that played regularly and nation wide.

How about Ad Council ads? TV, radio and on posters, billboards, bus/train stations, etc. A blitz of ads in every shape and form is what's needed. Screw the Monkey$tainMedia.

The entire health care system is going to collapse just like those huge mega banks collapsed under their own greed and people are going to suffer because of it, more than ever before.

The nicety nice commercials are good but I think they need some backbone to strengthen the message a bit more.

This is like war dammit!

We need a massive blow back the RW TERRA and Blue Dog rhetoric, roll out those visual graphs featuring the cost of doing nothing or maintaining the status quo.

[bobbolink]

3. You're right! Billboards, full-page ads, etc.

I've been advocating that, but NO RESPONSE from DU.

Guess we'd rather complain than take action.....:(

[juno jones]

8. And that sort of stuff is not so expensive.

I sent $5 here, $5 there to Obama and with a few thousand others it added up. There should be someone taking adavntage of that fact. I'm a paycheck from homelessness myself, but would contribute towards ads and billboards in that way.

[bobbolink]

10. No, it mostly takes a willingness to work together.

Take a look at this, and see just how likely it is to find that willingness...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6169157&mesg_id=6169157

Hear the crickets??????

[kath]

6. Think you meant 1993 in your title, not 2003 - '93 was when Clinton tried for reform.

[valerief]

7. A trillion dollars doesn't buy what it used to. Just $3 lattes for 900 million years. nt