Unaffordable healthcare

It really is time to say that the U.S. simply does not have a good healthcare system. Sure, there's the technology and there's the pharmaceutical research. But, remember, these are supposed to be instruments in the service of something or another (namely, human health), not goods in themselves. Technological and biomedical research results and products to which people do not have access are pointless except to those who make bundles of money off of them. It really is rather simple: the U.S. healthcare system sucks.

U.S. health care spending increased 7.9 percent to nearly $1.9 trillion in 2004, once again outpacing wage growth and inflation on its way to chewing up a record 16 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, according to a new federal report.

Spending for hospital and physician services accounted for 62 percent of the spending increase, which was driven mainly by new medical treatments, rising prices and growing use of medical services, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported Monday....

That means more people, particularly low-income workers, can't afford health insurance for themselves and their families.

"It's starting to affect middle-income people as well," said Paul Ginsburg, the president of The Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan health research group in Washington.