Nancy St. Onge of Baldwinsville has been battling cancer for the last five years. The pills she has to take daily costs $40 each. Her chemotherapy treatments are another $3,000 a month. Throw in MRIs, weekly doctor visits, and the gas money needed to get there — it’s tens of thousands of dollars a year.
“It adds up even with health insurance,” says St. Onge. “People have gone into debt and then had to file for bankruptcy because of the cost.”
St. Onge is among the 97 million Americans who, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, struggled with paying medical bills this past year. And that struggle remains a major issue — how to control health-care costs — as Congress works on overhauling the healthcare system. The United States has the most expensive health-care system in the world.
Take a look at these numbers:
- Nationally, medical spending last year was estimated by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading non-partisan research organization, to be $2.4 trillion.
- Kaiser projects the price to reach $3.1 trillion by year 2012 — that’s over one-fifth of the American economy.
- In Syracuse, consulting company Mercer says health-care costs averaged $7,699 per person in 2008.
- And this year Mercer reports the price per person will jump almost 8 percent to $8,308.
Two factors push the skyrocketing cost health coverage — the price and volume of medical care. And with the cost of coverage skyrocketing, more people look to the pending health care legislation in Congress for relief.
Dale Tussing is a Syracuse University economics professor specializing in health economics. “Uniquely, medical care is an industry where the prices are going to rise just as fast as people’s incomes are,” he says. In most industries, the goal is to increase productivity and drive down prices. “For medical care,” Tussing points out, “the focus is on better results.”
When their health is threatened, he said, patients generally are willing to pay as much as the medical profession charges.
The second factor in health insurance cost is volume, or need for medical care. Baby boomers are the largest generation in the United States. As these 76.1 million people age, the amount of medical care they require rises as well.
And since the health-care debate started in Congress, talk of cost-cutting has been on the front line. Under the House health bill passed in November, Americans can choose to keep their current health-care plan or join a government plan similar to Medicare. Medicare is a tax-supported, government-run program that pays for medical expenses for those 65 and older. In the House bill, everyone would be required to buy insurance. Those who can’t afford it on their own would get subsidies and tax credits to help pay the costs. Employers would be required to provide basic care insurance for their employees or pay a fee to support the government-run program.
U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, was among the 220 representatives who voted for the House measure. “One of his main concern is what health insurance is doing to families, individuals, and businesses as a whole,” says Abigail Gardner, Maffei’s spokesperson. Without the government overhaul, she said, the skyrocketing cost of health care and insurance “is going to bankrupt business that are trying to offer insurance for their employees.” Added Gardner. “It’s going to bankrupt families and its going to bankrupt individuals who are trying to buy insurance on their own.”
But some experts say changing the financing of the health-care system is just a temporary solution to a problem that’s been around for decades. Thomas Dennison is the director at Syracuse University’s Health Services Management and Policy Program. To contain medical spending, he says, Americans need to fix they way they deliver healthcare. The current focus is on treatment, not prevention. It should be the other way around, Dennison said.
“There is no incentive for doctors to make sure you’re well,” Dennison said. “The only incentive to make money is to make sure you keep coming back to them whenever you’re sick. We need to set up a system to collaborate, cooperate and to keep people as well as possible.”
As of mid-December, the Senate was still working on its version of the healthcare legislation. The Senate’s measure also requires everyone to buy insurance, but does not include a government-run program like the House’s version. The Senate Democratic leadership was predicting a vote on its measure before Christmas. Then members from both the House and Senate would have to confer to make their two versions agree. And President Barack Obama would have to sign the measure into law.
For Nancy St. Onge of Baldwinsville, who faces an ever-growing stack of medical bills, the pending legislation is a good beginning. “We got to start somewhere,” she says. “We need to have health care available for people that they can afford — that they can qualify for.”
(Jessica Shaw is a senior with dual majors in finance and broadcast journalism.)
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