The Uninsured to Grow in Size, and Single Payer Health Insurance
Welcome to this installment of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. This time we will look at two interesting articles that each cover its own topic, rather than several articles coving the same topic. Our first article is entitled, "Analysts say number of uninsured Americans to grow," and comes to us from the Associated Press.
This article discusses how, if there is no change in health care policy, the amount of uninsured in the U.S. will leap from 45 million now to 54 million in ten years, or by 2019. The largest factor to blame is how health insurance premiums are rising more than incomes, creating a larger gap between what people can and can't afford. The article says that spending in health care this year will reach $2.6 trillion dollars, accounting for roughly 18 percent of our economy.
The article states that the type of system we have now, which is a set fee for a specific service, causes many health care professionals and doctors to spend money on care that isn't always in the best interest of the patient. They suggest that doctors could be provided a bonus for more efficient and relevant health care. Whichever way they help the uninsured be able to get the health care they need, one can hope it's done quickly.
Our second article comes to us from The Huffington Post and is entitled, "More Than a Band-Aid for Health Care Reform, Single-Payer is the Solution." In this article, the author looks at recent stimulus packages that are meant to help stimulate health care reform and make health insurance more affordable. They also surmise that the single-payer system, rather than the private system like we have in place today.
The article cites China as a country who has moved to this system in the hopes to make health care more efficient, and the author feels that the single-payer system would eliminate waste and overspending, making our own system more efficient. Hopefully our system will become more efficient in the future, but honestly only time will tell at this point.
This concludes this edition of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. We thank you for reading it, and hope you enjoyed it.
