America's Healthcare Crisis - What This Means For You

American healthcare faces two fundamental problems:

• The skyrocketing cost of healthcare is economically unsustainable.
• In spite of the extraordinary amount spent, too many Americans remain uninsured.

Any attempt at healthcare reform must address both of these issues. To reduce spending without providing coverage for the uninsured leaves the crisis unresolved. To cover the uninsured by increasing federal spending is unsustainable.

• In 2008 Americans spent 2.4 trillion dollars on healthcare, 17% of our Gross Domestic Product.
• Prior to its financial collapse at the end of 2008, General Motors spent $1,600 dollars on healthcare for every car it produced, more than it spent on steel.
• In 2008 healthcare spending rose 6.9%, twice the rate of inflation.
• In 2008 the annual premium for an employer based plan for a family of four was $12,700. Workers paid an average of $3,400 of this, nearly 12% more than he or she paid in 2007.
• The average full-time minimum wage worker earns $10,712 per year.
• Employer based health insurance premiums have increase 120% since 1999.

There are only two ways to control costs. Either patients, physicians, nurses, hospitals, and the business community work together to use healthcare dollars more efficiently, or the government will restrict access to care. History teaches us there is no third option.

The Fundamental Question:

In considering healthcare reform we must begin with one fundamental question. Who should control the personal and complex process of healthcare decision-making? You and your physician? Or Washington? All reforms fall into one category or the other.

Physicians for Reform strongly believes patients and physicians should remain at the center of American medicine. This is only possible when patients control their own healthcare dollars, not the government.