The Strain of Health Care Costs

I've expressed concern about access to health care both here and elsewhere in my writing.  As an article in today's New York Times discusses, the problem is not simply that the number of those completely with health insurance is growing.  Even those with insurance are finding that they cannot afford the increasing amounts they are being asked to pay for coverage.  The combination of higher premiums and larger deductibles and co-payments are forcing increasing numbers to go without necessary care.  And when they do receive care, many are finding that all of their expenses are not being covered by plans that have less coverage than they used to.  "Experts say that too often for the underinsured, coverage can seem like health insurance in name only - adequate only as long as they have no medical problems."

It is hard to fault employers for demanding that employees pick up more of the costs of their care, especially small employers whose "insurance premiums tend to be proportionately higher than ones paid by large employers, becuase small companies have little bargaining clout with insurers."  But all employers are feeling the strain of increased competitive pressures and a weak economy.

In his encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII identified health care as among the basic rights that flow from the dignity of the human person.  In his address to the 34th General Assembly of the United Nations, Pope John Paul II included as among the human rights endorsed by the Catholic Church "the right to food, clothing, housing [and] sufficient health care."

We need to be giving much more serious consideration than we are to the question of how to provide this basic need to all persons.  Among other things, that requires coming up with some viable means of cutting health care costs.  I've seen far too little discussion of how this can be accomplished in the sound bites we are getting on the health care plans offered by the Presidential candidates.