Private Health Insurance costs are unsustainable

[BirminghamExaminer]

Excerpt:
While looking through a book I found an old Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance bill from 1966 for a single woman in Atlanta. Her bill was $16.38 for a three month period. That equates to $5.46 a month.



In 1966, the minimum wage was $1.25. So the woman who received the insurance bill made at least $200 a month. If we assume the woman was working for minimum wage, her health insurance costs per month were 2.73% of her wages.

Today, minimum wage in Georgia and Alabama is $7.25. That equates to $1160 per month. Let's compare the cost of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama for a single woman living in Birmingham today.



The Birmingham woman pays $567 per month for her health insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield. If we assume this woman is making minimum wage, she makes $1160 per month and her health insurance costs per month are 48.9% of her wages.

[depakid]

1. Now contrast that with Australia- a country with a "robust public option"

My private cover went up $1.50 per fortnight, which amounts to not quite a 1% increase- but assume for simplicity's sake it's $1,500 per year.

Minimum wage is about $15.00 per hour.

100 hours of work at 38 hours per week and in less than three weeks, the private cover is paid for.

[BirminghamExaminer]

2. Really? Can I move to Australia? n/t

[depakid]

3. If you're under 45 and have a trade (building trades are in dire need) it's a possibility

[havocmom]

4. LOL, are you married? My daughter has been to Oz 3 times and is so homesick for it

She really should live there. ;)

[bulloney]

5. But we can't have socialized medicine. It's nothing but bad news.

Geez, there's all of this anecdotal evidence of how much less health care costs in other countries. These countries rank higher in major health categories than the U.S., but these Limbaugh-Hannity-Beck-Bachmann robots who couldn't take a crap without getting orders from them will not listen to the evidence from other nations.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, BirminghamExaminer.

[Juche]

7. Our system will collapse

Wages grow at 2-3% a year while health care costs grow at 6% or more. And it isn't just a 6% across the board. People on individual policies see far higher rate growth and individuals who get HI via work see more costs passed onto them. So more accurate rates of growth are 10% a year or more for higher deductibles, copays, premiums, etc.

A health care plan for a family of 4 is supposed to be 25000 by 2020 or so. By that point a family of 4 will make about 60,000 a year.

I guess we will see a 2 tier health system (which isn't necessarily bad). Generic drugs, basic surgery but nothing expensive (ie no procedures that cost more than 20k as an example) for most people.

[AdHocSolver]

8. I have another example to relate about the increase in health insurance costs.

Back in 1978, I left a job that I had worked at for several years to return to school full-time to complete credits for a degree as part of a career change.

The previous employer provided a comprehensive Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance policy. I contacted Blue Cross to get individual coverage and purchased a policy with comparable benefits for about $45.00 a month.

The yearly cost for health insurance coverage thirty years ago was around $540.00, or less than one month's premium in the example cited for last year.

In thirty years, health insurance premiums increased over 1,200 percent. (12 x $567.00 = $6804.00; $6,804 / $540 = 12.6).

My annual wage at the job I left back then was around $14,000 per year, which is almost $7.00 per hour, and which provided a fairly comfortable life style back then. How times have changed.