Fixing our health crisis

I am getting ready to move and I was going through some papers and books and magazines that were in the shed over in the corner in a box and I found a reader's digest magazine from April 2006 it cost $2.99 back then by the way and on the cover is a special report "I can't afford to get sick!" fixing our health crisis and I was just amazed at we are talking about the same problem six years later reported by KERRYHOWLEY which I thought was interesting and she was saying that 70% of those driven to debt by medical costs had insurance at the time she also went on to mention that is not surprising when you consider this the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that America's healthcare costs have risen at twice the rate of inflation since 1970 total cost amount to about $2 trillion annually, that's $2 trillion annually with almost half of that government spending what's behind this enormous price tag here are the biggest components hospital care $571 billion Dr. services $400 billion prescription drugs $189 billion nursing home care $115 billion private insurance $96 billion dental services $82 billion home healthcare $43 billion driven partly by these increased insurance premiums have risen at an even faster annual clip 9% in 2005 alone consumers are hit hard by the escalating prices but they are certainly not the only ones feeling the impact... To answer this dilemma we need to reduce unnecessary spending stop wasting time and money focus on prevention and to really/cost we need to reform malpractice torts, eliminate insurance fraud, move from paper to digital patient records, move from paper to electronic billing claims adjudication and remittance, move from hand written to electronic drug prescriptions, increase use of generic drugs. stop Overprescribing antibiotics allow individuals to buy insurance across state lines and that would save a total of $444 billion a year. Here's the deal in this is the real bottom line annual premiums on the whole story if there's a deductible before benefits kick in make sure you understand how it works how well are you protected from catastrophic cost, we be able to use your regular doctors, how complicated is it to see a specialist, do you have a choice of hospitals, are you prescriptions covered and... what other benefits are included