Health-Care Costs Increasing for Americans

Gas prices are up. Food prices are up. Unemployment is up. And now you can add health-care costs to that list.According to the Milliman Medical Index, health-care costs have more than doubled for American families since 2002.The index qualifies health-care costs as those that come out of an employee's pocket, like insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles and co-insurance payments. The costs under the most common form of employer-sponsored health insurance have climbed to more than $8,000 this year.Compare that to a family of four paying only 36 hundred dollars nine years ago. That comes out to an additional $84 a week, just for health care. Employers do still pay most of the total health care costs for families, but that portion has reached an all time low of only around 60%.Counting employers' contributions, this year's total health- care costs for a family of four skyrocketed to more than $19,000 a year - up more than $10,000 since 2002.In just one year those costs ballooned up 7%.While the rise in health-care costs is slower this year than in recent years they are still rising much higher than costs in other consumer areas. And things could certainly get even worse - since Obamacare had virtually no impact on costs for this year - as it's still being rolled out.We can't keep piling more rising costs onto the American families. This is absolutely the wrong time to kick off such a massive entitlement program as Obamacare.We need to make things better, not worse.

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