Healthcare Costs as Much as a New Car

Written by Andy Smith, MTM publisher

Healthcare for a family covered by a large employer has cost, on average, $22,885 last year. That’s $2,000 more than the sticker price for a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle, which Drew Altman discusses in his latest Axios  column. If this startling and accurate claim does not wake up the ‘leaders’ of the healthcare sector and the country, what will?

Our healthcare costs as much as a new car each year, every year. With healthcare costs rising faster than any other household cost, it will soon be as much as a new Mercedes every year. Healthcare leaders are of course already at the Platinum Maserati level, but that’s OK; they don’t pay for it.

Added to that, if our family has a‘healthcare crash’ we will have to ‘buy two more cars’ before we see a pennyfrom our insurers.

If it appears that I am angry, no apologies,I am; we all should be. There is a far better way, and still the sector refusesto try to get better by hiding behind the ‘it’s always been this way’ excuse. If we accepted that from anyone else we wouldstill have ships sinking every day, aircraft crashing, and our food stillcontaminated by whatever additives suppliers wish upon us.

From a simulation and training viewpoint itis surely time for the industry to stand up, as it appears the much derided‘for profit’ simulation and training businesses care more about the future ofhealthcare than all those within it, who view the urgently needed changes tothe way healthcare is done as simply an inconvenience to themselves.

“I learned this way and it was good enoughfor me!” That is an answer to the wrong question, which ought to be “Was itreally good enough for the patients you ‘practiced’ upon?”