The Cost of Doing Nothing

If no health care reform is enacted, what effects can we expect from doing nothing different? The Urban Institute and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently looked into this. Here are some of their findings.

Health care costs and premiums are growing faster than personal incomes, if this trend continues,

• Fewer employers will offer group-coverage insurance because of the cost
• Fewer employees will take group-coverage offered because they can not afford it
• More people will be in the market for non-group coverage because fewer employers will offer coverage, but because of higher costs a smaller proportion of those people will purchase that coverage
• More people will enroll in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) straining government revenues and increasing pressure for higher taxes.

In 2019, health care spending for governments, employers, and individuals will increase $880B above current spending.

Between 2009 and 2019,

• Medicaid & CHIP spending will increase from $251B to $458B per year (an 82% increase)
• Uncompensated care will increase from $62B to $123B (a 98% increase). The combined increases in Medicaid, CHIP, and uncompensated care raise government spending by $268B
• Employer premiums payments will increase from $430B to $847B (a 97% increase), average premium per employee will increasing from $5,900 (11% of median family income) to $11,700 (19% of median family income)
• Individual & family spending will increase from $326B to $521B (a 60% increase), raising average out of pocket costs from $1200 to $1800 per person.

source: The Cost of Failure - The Urban Institute

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411887_cost_of_failure.pdf