Healthier patients
happier providers
a stronger America

Health Care Crisis: A broken system in need of true reform

We're currently experiencing a health care crisis in America with billions of dollars wasted, millions of people going without care, and primary care doctors closing practices. How did we get here? By using medical insurance—a system originally created to cover unplanned serious illnesses and crises—to manage our routine, everyday health needs.

Insurance is a critical element in the health care of Americans—for catastrophic, unpredictable events. However, it creates significant problems when used as a payment system for everyday health care. Insurance actually makes primary care (health maintenance and every day non-emergency care, the majority of the care we need) more expensive and less effective.

Here’s why Americans are paying more but getting less for health insurance:

  • The costs of employer-based health insurance premiums have doubled since 2000.1
  • Americans are paying higher deductibles. The average family deductible increased from $1,034 to $1,344 in just two years.1
  • American families aren’t only paying higher deductibles, but higher copayments as well. In 2004, only one in five people with health insurance through an employer had a copayment of more than $25. In 2008, that number was one in three.2
  • A middle-income family with individual converage spends an average 22% of household income on health care while a simliar middle-income family with employer based covereage spends about 8% of their income on health care costs.3

Millions of Americans are going uninsiured or underinsured because of escalating health care costs, decreased access to health care and gaps in quality of care. 

  • 86.7 million Americans were uninsured at some point during 2007 and 2008.4
  • Working families make up 80% of the uninsured.5
  • Insured Americans are going without needed medical care due to expensive copayments and deductibles.6

 The solution: Direct Primary Care

1 Kaiser Family Foundation. Employer Health Benefits Survey 2008. http://ehbs.kff.org/pdf/7790.pdf

2 American Health Insurance Plans Center for Policy and Research, Individual Health Insurance 2006-2007: A Comprehensive Survey of Premiums, Availability, and Benefits. (Washington, DC: American Health Insurance Plans, 2007)

3 Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, 2001-2006.

4 Families USA and The Lewin Group. Americans at Risk: One in Three Uninsured. http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/americans-at-risk.pdf

5 Kaiser Family Foundation. The Uninsured: A Primer, Key Facts about Americans without Health Insurance. (Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation, 2008).

6 The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Snapshots from the Kitchen Table: Family Budgets and Health Care. http://www.kff.org/uninsured/7849.cfm.

Primary Care:

Essential to Good Health

Primary care includes disease prevention, health maintenance, patient education and counseling, diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illnesses. It spans preventive care (such as immunizations and check-ups), routine treatment of common injuries and complaints, and maintenance for ongoing health issues.

Primary care is the foundation of good health. It's the key to preventing debilitating and expensive problems. A health care solution that doesn't address primary care is no solution at all.

 

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