Health Insurance Costs

Health insurance costs are serious. With no health insurance, you could potentially rack up hundreds of dollars in debt in just a few days if you got into an accident or needed to be hospitalized for some other reason. Let's say you miss work because you want to avoid paying for a doctor visit. Eventually, if you need antibiotics and miss more than a week of work, you'll have to visit the doctor anyway, pay for the antibiotics (which can be costly), and lost work days. With health insurance, you could lose less work time and get those antibiotics right away at much lower cost.

Health Insurance Costs for the Uninsured

Lack of health insurance is a systemic problem too. According to the Heritage Foundation, federal, state, and local governments will spend an estimated $34.6 billion on uncompen­sated health care for the uninsured, an estimated 85 percent of the total costs of uncompensated care delivered in the United States . Health care expenditures have increased steadily in the last forty years. In 2002 health care cost the country almost 15 percent of GDP, or three times more than the industry's share in 1960. Per capita health costs doubled from 1990 to 2002, jumping to $2,738 per person.

With so much money at stake, lack of insurance costs not only the individual but also taxpayers, public health agencies, hospitals, and society at large. Employers who do not offer affordable health insurance to their employees are more likely to lose work days from employees and experience greater turnover when people get ill. Many studies have shown the extent of lost work hours due to mental health issues, which are usually covered by insurance. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 2003 that depressive disorders cost employers around $44 billion that year, even assuming that a certain proportion of those employees had health insurance.

Studies have shown that preventative care makes a big difference in overall health. People with health insurance are more likely to get regular exams and visit the doctor at early signs of sickness. Short-term costs are discomfort, lost work time, and exposure of germs to family and co-workers. Long-term costs of no health insurance hurt your bank account, financial stability, and health. Those with health insurance have a better chance of early diagnosis of diseases like cancer, and therefore a better chance of beating the disease. Therefore, a long-term cost of having health insurance could be your own life. People with health insurance, if they so choose, will seek treatment for illness, receive preventative care, miss fewer work days, and rely less on public services funded by all taxpayers. That will result in lower health insurance costs to society.

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