Health Care - The Cost of Doing Nothing

Excellent Article in today's New York Times  Week in Review by Reed Abelson.

Points out how predicted increases in health care costs (assuming no reforms passed) will screw the nation:

1.Total agreement among economists and health care experts that  medical costs will continue to rise and outpace inflation and the average person's income over the next decade.
"It is a course that is literally bankrupting the fedral government and businesses and indivduals across the country"   Peter V. Lee of Pacific Business Group on Health

2.. "It's also cramping our economic growth."  Frank McArdie Hewitt Associates

3. More businesses will not offer health insurance.

4.  People without health insurance will rise by one million per year.

5. Estimates 275,000 people will die in next decade because of not having insurance.

6.  States will be forced to cut medicaid benefits sharply, cut community health centers and state hospitals.

The article concludes that small steps won't help much.   It also sttes that if Nixon's proposed health care reform had passed, the nation would be spending hundreds of billions of dollars less per year on health care.  If Clinto's plan had passed, Americans would be spending $500 billion less per year.

Should there be any urgency Here?   You bet!