Up, Up and Away

Trey Smith

U.S. health insurance premiums have climbed faster than wages and inflation this year, and look poised to accelerate in 2013, adding to voter concerns about soaring healthcare costs ahead of November elections for the White House and Congress.

A study released on Tuesday showed that premiums for employer-sponsored health plans, which cover about 149 million Americans, grew a modest 4 percent to $15,745 in 2012. It was a substantially slower rate of growth than in past years, including 2011, when premiums jumped 9 percent.

But the study's authors at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, said higher costs still took a bigger bite from the income of middle-class employees, whose wages advanced only 1.7 percent, as employers shifted more healthcare costs to their workers.
~ from Employer Healthcare Premiums Outpace Inflation, Wages by David Morgan ~

This is the chief bugaboo with ObamneyCare: No cost containment. While both candidates SAY they will work on strategies to do just that, neither has offered a comprehensive plan.

And let's face it. Whatever they come up with -- IF they come up with anything at all -- will be mere window dressing. This vaunted plan wasn't created to serve the public; it was crafted to enrich health insurers (who make big campaign contributions). So, Americans will be mandated to buy degraded services whose cost will keep on increasing by leaps and bounds each year.

Think about it. How is the public better served when the rate of premiums increases twice as fast or more than wages? Later in the article cited above, many employers say that they expect premiums to rise by as much as 7 percent next year. If wages increase next year by the same percent as this year, this means that health insurance premiums will outstrip wages by a factor of 4!!