{"id":926,"date":"2010-06-16T17:29:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T22:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/2010\/06\/16\/5-painful-health-care-lessons-from-massachusetts\/"},"modified":"2010-06-16T17:29:50","modified_gmt":"2010-06-16T22:29:50","slug":"5-painful-health-care-lessons-from-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/2010\/06\/16\/5-painful-health-care-lessons-from-massachusetts\/","title":{"rendered":"5 painful health-care lessons from Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 painful health-care lessons from Massachusetts<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Costs are rising relentlessly for both families and for the state government. The median annual premium for family plans jumped 10% from 2007 to 2009 to $14,300 — again, that’s a substantial rise on top of an already enormous number. For small businesses, the increase was 12%. In 2006, the state spent around $1 billion on Medicaid, subsidies for medium-to-lower earners, and other health-care programs. Today, the figure is $1.75 billion. The federal government absorbed half of the increase.<\/p>\n

Hence reform’s proponents boast that expenses have risen only $354 million or around 6% a year. But the real increase is double that, including the federal share. And it’s highly possible that given the current budget pressures, the U.S. will reduce the contribution that has encouraged the state to spend so lavishly…<\/p><\/div>\n

Interesting article. I don’t agree with all their claims. It isn’t as though expecting to go from the extremely broken system we have suffered with for decades to one without flaw is a likely outcome. What would be nice is if we can learn from experiments and adjust. Those who profit enormously at the expense of society from the current system are going to provide critiques of any changes. And those that want to fix the broken system should listen to sensible criticism and make improvements (not just defend any changes because the existing system is so bad).<\/p>\n

Related: USA Heath Care System Needs Reform<\/a> – International Health Care System Performance<\/a> – USA Spends Record $2.3 trillion ($7,681 Per Person) on Health Care in 2008<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 painful health-care lessons from Massachusetts: Costs are rising relentlessly for both families and for the state government. The median annual premium for family plans jumped 10% from 2007 to 2009 to $14,300 — again, that’s a substantial rise on top of an already enormous number. For small businesses, the increase was 12%. In 2006, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[169,49,175],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":927,"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investing.curiouscatblog.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}