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Current healthcare costs and statistics are nothing less than mind-boggling. In 2008, total health expenditures were approaching $2.5 trillion - or almost $8000 per person. It is expected that these costs will continue to rise at 6% to 7% a year for the next decade. These costs are rising out of control and are not sustainable.

Just about everyone agrees that administrative costs, inefficiencies, inflated prices of services and products, waste, and/or fraud are the major key contributing factors to the current healthcare crisis.

Despite the fact that curing these problems would no doubt shave, probably, as much as 20% off the total cost of healthcare (that's just a guess), the real problem may be that Uncle Sam has got the cart so far in front of the horse that the horse is now "out of sight, out of mind".

You'd think that, given the current economic circumstances, Congress could understand that NO-ONE can pay any more; not Uncle Sam, not employers, and not the patients themselves. Everyone is out of money! What good will it do to have everyone insured if that insurance can't be paid for? Or do we just sit back and wait for Wall Street to invent a batch of new "medical-derivatives" to make some more money out of thin air?

Maybe the time has come for us to realize we just can't afford to provide 306,000,000 people with "mandatory healthcare coverage" without providing some "mandatory healthcare education" to go with it. Cleaning up the healthcare system (assuming that's even possible) without changing the current American mindset that "insurance will pay for everything" (whether or not you do anything to take care of yourself) just won't work.

In the final analysis, the healthcare crisis may be a by-product of an overall U.S. educational system failure; the same failure that is presently selling America short on a lot of other fronts.

- Ed Smith, Publisher
The EHS Letter Manual