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Compound(ing) fracture: the 6%/year health cost road to financial ruin--Rant #2

The second in a series of rants on this critical but wantonly overlooked issue:
The latest news is quite terrifying.  We are reverting to an even higher, pre-Great-Recession-level health care inflation rate of 6% for the foreseeable future.  Given the power of compounding, together with household income stagnating during the last 25 years and also for the foreseeable future, the average American family can be expected to pay twice as much of their income for health care 20 years from now.  Health costs will rise from around 10% of household income to 20%--from around $5,000 to $10,000 on a salary of about $52,000 by 2035, in real/2015 $$. 
Some of you may say, "Scott, you are extrapolating for 20 years, nothing ever keeps trending the same way for that long, things change."  I wish that were true in this case.  Health care costs have been trending well above inflation and wage increases for 35+ years.  Yet the obliviousness to the consequences continues.

It is hard for me to believe that our national leadership has run the numbers on the impact of continuing high health costs on the middle class.  They are acting like it's a minor problem.   HSS calls the increase "relatively modest."  One respected economist referred to the 6% forecast as only "not great news", while the WSJ called the most recent annual increase "merely 6%".  The complacency has to end, and we can help end it...indeed, we have to, as soon as possible. 

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