Andrew Sullivan wrote something that kind of underscored why healthcare is an emergency and why robust reform is needed now:
If you look at the current house bill with the most steam behind it, this is what the Congressional Budget Office says it will do to costs: “The net cost of the coverage provisions would be growing at a rate of more than 8% per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; we would anticipate a similar trend in the subsequent decade.”
That means almost no industry will exist in the US in the next decade except healthcare. And that’s because every other industry will go bankrupt trying to pay for it. How does GM compete when it has to pay a medical bill that German car companies largely leave to the government?
In other words, even with the heartiest reform bill, costs could increase so much that the health insurance companies could potentially annihilate all other industries. And this analysis is coming from a well-known fiscal conservative.