Health care costs will exceed $8,000 per person in 2009, according to a report by the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s a $356 per person increase in health care spending. The rising medical costs will consume a bigger piece of a shrinking economy. Another bleak piece of information in the report was that taxpayers will be responsible for more than half of the nation’s health care bill within the next seven years.
The health care costs forecast didn’t even include the recent legislation that expanded medical care coverage for children of low income working parents. By 2018 $1 out of every $5 spent in the economy will be for medical care costs. The Kaiser Family Foundation now estimates the uninsured has risen to 48 million. The new White House administration believes health care costs are crushing the middle class and small businesses and that in order to get the economy back on track, they need to act quickly to address rising health care costs.
