Just a few startling facts about our health insurance system.
1. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. spends more than $2 trillion a year (roughly 16% of the gross domestic product) on health expenditures yet has a healthcare system ranked 37th in performance in the world.
2. The Census Bureau estimates that some 46 million Americans were uninsured in 2007 that’s 15% of the U.S. population.
3. In just three years, the Medicare and Medicaid programs will account for 50 percent of all national health spending.
4. Over the last decade, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased 131 percent.
5. Rising health care costs correlate with significant drops in health insurance coverage, and national surveys also show that the primary reason people are uninsured is due to the high and escalating cost of health insurance coverage.
6. Elsewhere, insurance and drug companies are making stunning profits. Health insurance CEOs averaged $8.7 million in 2006 compensation and pharmaceutical company CEOs pulled down an average of $4.4 million.
7. In 2004 (the year for which the most recent data are available), Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate in the world at 5.8 per 1,000 births, compared with Russia’s 11.5 and Detroit’s 15.5.
8. Starbucks spends more money on Health Insurance for employees then on their coffee beans.
