ALTHOUGH Donald Trump occasionally pokes it in the ribs, the fight seems to have gone out of the Republican effort to reform America’s health-care system. That is a shame, not because the first attempt at reform was well-judged, but because the system badly needs attention. Seven years after Obamacare became law, health care remains ruinously expensive.
Even as the number of people without insurance has fallen, the proportion of Americans who struggle to pay for treatment has hardly budged. In February of this year, 29% of people said they or a family member had struggled to pay a medical bill, according to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation; in March 2010, 30% said the same thing. About 60% of the strugglers in the latest poll had used up most or all of their savings; nearly three-quarters had cut back spending on food, clothes and basic household items.
Strikingly, 30% of people with health insurance reported struggling—not much lower than the 41% without insurance who did so (retired people, who are covered by a government scheme, fared better: only 20% said they struggled). One reason is that insurers have been passing on more medical charges to...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2oZi81k
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