Skip to main content

Good news? Or better bad news?

As Warren Buffett pointed out in May, we have had a long sad march in health care costs, from 5% of GDP about 50 years ago to approaching 18% of GDP today.  So it is irritating to hear "good news" like this:  health costs "only" went up 4-5% last year. 

When wages are going up 2-3%, that's a huge cost increase for most families.  A 2% "real", inflation-adjusted annual increase adds up to a 28% increase over 10 years.  That means health care costs passing 10% and heading toward 15% of household incomes. 

At the same time, many economists are puzzled as to why wages are not increasing much more rapidly?  As Buffett implied:  It's the health care costs, stupid!  Let's use the "golden rule", putting ourselves in employees' shoes:  If you are given a choice of higher wages and no health insurance, or keeping your health insurance but sacrificing some potential wage increases to pay for health inflation, what would you "choose"?

(See Kaiser Health News article.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it a “Miracle Drug”?...if it Costs a Fortune and Creates Lifelong Dependency...&...Saggy Faces!?

[It’s been a while since our last blog post.  A lot has happened since– including some “miracles” ! So we’re going to do two posts in a row…] Normally we should all be happy about miracle drugs... shouldn't we ? Yes, there is lots of upside from taking semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Montjaro)--and upcoming new, even-more-miraculous drugs TBD:  losing huge amounts of weight quickly, a much lower risk of diabetes–and probably less heart disease and other chronic conditions as well.  But what if the “miracle” requires:   $200-300/week, with a lifetime cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars…  a drug that you can never quit…because if you stop taking it, you gain back all the weight it helped you lose–not to mention the chronic diseases which the drugs kept at bay… and it leaves your face (and the rest of your skin?) sagging …    (plus, it’s so new at such high dosages– who knows what happens after years of use…? ) No doubt, in spit...

It’s Come To This for Many of Our Teens: Radical Surgery and/or a Lifetime of Pharmaceuticals

The American Academy of Pediatrics just came out in favor of powerful prescription drugs (which must be taken lifelong to avoid weight regain & chronic disease) for adolescents--and potentially for pre-teens (ages 8-11)--with moderate to severe obesity. Bari atric surgery (permanently reengineering kids’ gastrointestinal systems) should also be considered for adolescents with severe obesity .  (The Academy also recommends "nutrition support, physical activity, and behavioral therapy"--but as with so many other areas of US chronic disease management, we can see where default treatments are headed: drugs & surgical procedures.) Such radical treatment recommendations created the usual (and temporary and ineffectual) tsunami of news & social media shock and indignation. The decades-long performative reaction to the increasingly bad news on dangerous levels of early obesity–and now 1 in 3 teens with prediabetes, across ethnicities & income levels–is itself sicken...

Both/And: Personal & School & Social Responsibility for Health

Many people are promoting a false dichotomy for who/what to “blame” for decades of pervasive inactivity & unhealthy nutrition--the key preventable factors which have led to the majority of adults developing chronic disease. Some believe that people with preventable chronic diseases made a series of unhealthy choices for decades, for which they need to accept personal responsibility for the consequences. On the other side, a growing number of policymakers focus on the “social determinants of health.”  In other words, there are many things beyond your control, which impact what you eat & drink and how active you are.  This includes factors such as your family, neighborhood, school, employer, transportation, public safety, housing, community layout, etc. etc.  It’s those external social factors which determine your health destiny.   Actually, the personal and social are inextricably connected--not opposite ends of the spectrum.  Let’s consider the role...