Economic Recovery Needs To Include Health Insurance Reform

Economic Recovery Needs To Include Health Insurance Reform in Individual Health Insurance

In a thoughtful piece in the Detroit Free Press by Marianne Udow-Phillips, the director of the Center for Health Care Research and Transformation in Michigan, she argues that any economic recovery should include financial reform for health insurance.

Udow-Phillips points out national health care spending totals over 16% of the United States gross domestic product — or over $2 trillion.

Even more, we spend more per capita on health care than any other industrialized country by a wide margin.

And though we spend literally tons of money on health care, we still have in the neighborhood of 45 million Americans living without any health insurance.

So how does a high uninsured rate affect our economy?

Here are a few points from Udow-Phillips’ piece:

• Workers with out health insurance are less healthy. Unhealthy workers equal unhealthy business
• Uninsured Americans increase overall health care costs when they wait until their health conditions requires the emergency room
• American firms are less competitive to attract workers on the global market

It seems silly that an economic recovery wouldn’t include health insurance reform, right?

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