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Medical costs have accelerated like the national debt. Eventually, they will consume everything. That fact is already obvious to the 30 percent who have no or insufficient insurance. Adequate family coverage runs about $700 per month for 80 percent coverage. That's $8,400 per year for the family who doesn't have medical problems. For those families actually hit with major medical problems, bankruptcy is a real probability.

Medical costs have risen like the national debt because your dollars are cheapened by the outstanding dollars increased by the national debt. We do have a debt-based economic system where increased debt is increased dollars with no increase in total value. This is the reason for our inflation at all levels. Until we get a handle on spending and reducing debt, you can expect conditions to get worse.

Health care costs are skyrocketing because government programs don't cover the cost of care. Medicare and Medicaid decide what they think a procedure should cost, then pay only 80% of that. Also, they can turn down payments after care is given. Doctors and hospitals then have to try to collect the 80% from Grandma (or the whole thing if they've been denied) or let it go. The money they didn't collect then has to be made up somewhere else....so guess whose premiums go up.

The most frustrating aspect of this for me is that those on Medicaid don't get billed the other 20%, and pay no co-pay or deductible, while those on Medicare, who must have at some point in their lives had a job and paid into the system, MUST be billed, by law, for co-pays and deductibles.

Also, the costs are skyrocketing because when 'medicaid moms' bring runny nosed kids with fever into the ER to be checked, they often undergo blood tests, IV's, sometimes spinal taps so that if anytime in the next 6 months they might develop a serious disease the docs can prove to the lawyers that it wasn't there already. The cost of out-of-control trial lawyers and lottery-seeking patients is not confined to the malpractice premium. Premiums are only a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of unnecessary tests and procedures designed to CYA.

O2