Numbers Tell Stories

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, American families have been losing ground financially over the last decade. The median household income in the U.S. in 2009 was $49,777. While that is 22.3 percent more than the median of $40,696 in 1999, after adjusting for inflation the median is actually 5.3 percent lower than it was a decade before.

Meanwhile, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the cost of coverage for a family of four has climbed 131 percent from 1999 to 2010. The average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance in 2010 was $5,049 for single coverage and $13,770 for family coverage.
~ from Employment-Based Health Insurance Fails America by Wendell Potter ~

Amid all the talk in Washington these days about why the US economy is so anemic, figures like these get the short shrift. Even if we decided to disregard the "adjusted for inflation" variable, the 131 percent increase in health insurance costs versus the 22.3 percent increase in median income represents a glaring problem!

It should go without saying that other costs of living -- food, shelter, utilities, clothing, transportation and entertainment -- have increased as well. So, this is why it IS important to adjust for inflation. What it all comes down to is that, while wages remain stagnant, everything else keeps going up.

This disparity offers a clear reason why Obamacare isn't the panacea its supporters make it out to be. The chief problem with this administration's so-called health care reform is that it did NOTHING to reform costs. With no cost containment mechanism and the cost of health care climbing faster than almost any other sector of the economy, it amounts to placing a small band-aid over a wound that keeps spreading.

Far worse, as many critics have pointed out again and again, the reform package with its individual mandate amounts to nothing more than an unstated bailout of the health insurance industry -- an industry that has no need to be bailed out because they already are sitting pretty.