This comes as no surprise:
Health insurance premiums have shot up more than 60 percent in the last eight years, and if they keep up at this pace the average family of four will be paying $25,000 a year just for health insurance, according to a report released Wednesday.
At the same time, deductibles are also going up for employer-sponsored plans, so workers are paying more and more for less and less, the non-profit Commonwealth Fund said.
The report, summarized at NBCNews.com, identifies the major reasons for this problem:
One big reason for the rising premiums? Rising expenses. “Broad evidence of poorly coordinated care, duplicative services, and administrative waste, as well as rising prices charged to those privately insured, signal that greater efforts are needed to slow cost growth in both private and public insurance markets,” the report finds.
This isn’t controversial. Earlier this year the independent Institute of Medicine made a formal pronouncement on what think-tanks and academic institutions had been saying for years. It said the U.S. health care system wasted $750 billion in 2009, about 30 percent of all health spending, on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems.
From the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) in 2008 to our current endeavor to help create a state-wide health information exchange (HIE), as well as providing a “patient portal” for parents to be able to access their childrens’ vital health information securely online, Pediatric Alliance has been committed to being part of the solution.
Below is a video that helps explain the goals that we embrace:
Here’s a link to our press release that explains the HIE:
ClinicalConnect HIE allows clinicians from across participating health care organizations to immediately and securely access critical patient information, including medications, allergies and lab results. The goal is to improve the quality and coordination of care for patients as they move among health care providers.
Providing health care insurance for the citizens of this country is very complicated. Until we find better solutions, it will remain complicated. And expensive.
Read NBC News article here.