Healthcare Costs – Healthcare-NOW

Healthcare For A Family Now Costs More Than Groceries To Feed Them For A Year

By Tara Culp-Ressler for ThinkProgress – As medical costs continue to rise, the annual health expenses for a family of four now exceed the typical of cost of their groceries during the same time period, according to a new report from consulting firm Milliman, Inc. The firm estimates that a typical family of four with…

Health Care and Profits, a Poor Mix

By Eduardo Porter for the New York Times – Thirty years ago, Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered an interesting pattern in the use of sedatives at nursing homes in the south of the state. Patients entering church-affiliated nonprofit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as…

Overhaul offers multi-billion dollar growth opportunity for health insurers

By the AP, Washington Post – The health care overhaul is poised to pour billions of dollars into an insurance industry thirsty for customers, according to health care consultant PwC. The massive federal law aims to cover millions of uninsured people and will take a major step toward that goal in 2014, when the government…

Doctor Visits Dropping, New Census Figures Show

By Sabrina Tavernise for the New York Times – Americans of working age are going to the doctor less frequently than they were 10 years ago, according to a new report by the Census Bureau. In 2010, people age 18 to 64 made an average of 3.9 visits to doctors, nurses and other medical professionals,…

Healthcare Spending to Remain High

Unnecessary care, fraud and high administrative costs are among factors. From the LA Times – With all the squabbling about healthcare, there’s one fact on which all sides can agree: American medicine costs too much, especially when you consider what we’re getting for our money. And as experts look toward the future, they don’t see…

Health Care Costs To Exceed A Record $20,000 Per Year For Families

By Jeffrey Young for the Huffington Post – Health care costs for a family of four covered by workplace health insurance will exceed $20,000 for the first time ever this year — $20,728 to be precise — according to a new study released Tuesday. That’s $1,335 more than in 2011. A family of four will…

Americans Cutting Back on Drugs and Doctor Visits

By Katie Thomas for the New York Times – Patients cut back on prescription drugs and doctor visits last year, a sign that many Americans are still struggling to pay for health care, according to a study released Wednesday by a health industry research group. The report, issued by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics,…

Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France

By Ezra Klein for the Washington Post – There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher. That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. In 2009, Americans spent…

Health Reform Devolves Into ‘Unaffordable Under-Insurance’

From In These Times – Healthcare reform in the shape of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) was supposed to relieve working Americans of the burdens of rising healthcare costs as they struggle to survive the jobless recovery. Instead, working Americans are being confronted with the emergence of a new stage in America’s downward…

Sharp Rise in U.S. Health Insurance Cost

By Reed Abelson for the New York Times – The cost of health insurance for many Americans this year climbed more sharply than in previous years, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and adding more uncertainty about the pace of rising medical costs. A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group…