Nearly 20 percent of Pennsylvanians, most of whom have insurance, will spend more than 10 percent of their family’s pre-tax income on healthcare costs next year, according to a report that reveals a new crack in the nation’s deepening healthcare crisis.

In its report, the consumer health group Families USA predicts that 2.2 million Pennsylvanians under age 65 will spend more than 10 percent of their pre-tax income on healthcare costs. Of that number, 1.9 million are insured.

Another 601,000 will spend more than a quarter of their pre-tax income on healthcare costs next year.

The report, touted as the first of its kind documenting these state-specific costs, is designed to project how significant healthcare costs will be for family budgets when voters go to the polls in the 2008 presidential election. 

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Insurance companies should face the same kind of federal regulation as firms that sell stocks and bonds, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday as she outlined her health care plan to voters around a dining room table.The patchwork of state regulation that insurers now operate under has allowed them to get away with offering meager health care policies and to move to states with more favorable rules, Clinton said. She said the federal government should regulate the companies more, though states still would be able to enact their own rules.

“We can’t do this state by state,” she said. “No state has the ability to get everyone in their state to get the insurance they need.”

The Republican National Committee was quick to react to Clinton’s remarks.

“If there’s one thing voters can count on when it comes to Hillary Clinton’s proposals, it’s that she’s always in favor of more Washington, D.C., regulation and bureaucracy,” said Amber Wilkerson, an RNC spokeswoman.

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Health care providers, insurance companies and drug makers should make information about prices available to the public, according to a new survey of leaders in health care and health policy. The latest Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey finds widespread support for such measures: In addition to the reporting of provider quality and prices, 86 percent of respondents support public reporting of drug prices charged to major purchasers, and 82 percent support the public reporting of medical loss ratios—the share of premium dollars that private insurance companies spend on actual medical care, rather than marketing, administration, and other expense or profit.

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As the Democratic presidential candidates debate whether Americans should be forced to obtain health insurance, the people of Massachusetts are living the dilemma in real time.A year after Massachusetts became the only state to require that individuals have health coverage, residents face deadlines to either sign up or lose their personal tax exemption, worth $219 on next year’s state income tax returns. More than 200,000 previously uninsured residents have enrolled, but state officials estimate that at least that number, and perhaps twice as many, have not.

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The report is the first to look at the well-being of low-income children by state, says co-author William O’Hare, demographer and senior fellow at the Kids Count program of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for needy children and families. The report is based on newly available federal data.

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The number of Americans without health insurance has now risen to over 47 million, and because of the rising cost of such insurance the number of uninsured will probably top 50 million in less than two years. This includes millions of children. I’m sure that this does not bother George Bush and his gang of right-wingers, but it does bother the rest of us.

In recent polls by ABCNEWS/Washington Post and CBS News/The New York Times, Americans preferred a universal health insurance program over the current employer-based system by a 2-1 margin. These results are in line with previous polls which have shown large majorities of Americans favoring government-provided health insurance for everyone. So why don’t we have it? We don’t have it because the health insurance industry uses its enormous power and money to strong-arm, strangle, and corrupt Republican legislators into blocking it.
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A new study by scientists in the US and the UK shows that the rate of deaths due to heart disease in young American adults has reached a plateau and may even be going up again in young women, after decades of hard won progress in reducing it. Researchers suggest the worrying trend could be due to bad health habits.

The study is the work of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, US, and the University of Liverpool in the UK, and is published in the 27th November issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

The levelling off of death rates due to heart disease among America’s young adults coincides with increasing rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other cardiovascular risk factors said the researchers.

Study co-author and medical officer with the US Public Health Service, Dr Earl S Ford said:

“Young adults should take stock of their lifestyles.”
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To appreciate the power of