Okay, I confess. Now it’s personal. Beginning this year, my family’s health insurance costs more than my mortgage. Ouch! Am I the only one hurting here?
Heck, DaimlerChrysler practically gave away its Chrysler division to escape its health and pension liability costs. This is the opinion of Atul Gawande, a general surgeon at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a New Yorker magazine staff writer, writing in a New York Times opinion piece. I picked this up from the Kaiser Network’s Daily Health Policy Report.
A 2006 survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians highlighted the fact that “emergency rooms everywhere are drowning in [uninsured] patients,” according to Gawande. He also notes a recent Commonwealth Fund study comparing health care in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Britain showing, among other things, that half of U.S. residents said they chose to forgo medical care in the past two years because of cost, twice the proportion in the other countries.
As colleague Kevin Gipson wrote here on April 14, 2007, “Ask any consumer bankruptcy attorney to list the major causes for filing bankruptcy and on their short list will be medical bills.”
