Reading: Reading 7: The Statistics Relating to Skyrocking Costs

The statistics relating to the skyrocketing costs of treating the sick indicate that there is no easy cure for inflation in America. Health costs rose 15.1% in 1981, whereas the inflation rate was only 8.9%. The entire nation spent approximately $287 billion on health care, an average of $1,225 per person. Since 85% of all Americans are covered by health insurance and get reimbursements of up to 75%, there are no incentives for reducing costs. Medicare and Medicaid, programs for the poor and the elderly, paid out $73 billion in 1981, an increase of $30 billion over the cost in 1976.

Between 1972 and 1982, hospital care costs quadrupled to $118 billion; doctors' services tripled to $54.8 billion; and nursing home costs quadrupled to $24.2 billion. A day in a hospital cost $133 in 1975; in 1982 the price was $250.

There are multiple causes for soaring medical costs. New construction, particularly when special highly technical areas like burn centers are required, has escalated in cost. To keep a patient alive with modern mechanisms like the kidney dialysis machine costs an added $9 million a year nationwide. The more highly technical treatment becomes, for example for heart and other organ transplants, the more impossible it becomes to halt the inflationary rise of medical cost.

The cost of medical services has a direct influence upon the cost of other things Americans purchase. Large companies provide health plans for their employees, and, as the premiums rice for those plans, the manufacturers must cover their expenses by increasing the sales price of their products. One automobile manufacturer, for example, estimates that the soaring costs of health insurance have added $350 to the cost of a car. Health costs are not isolated but, rather, have had an increasingly appalling effect upon the rate of inflation.

Vocabulary note:

- skyrocketing costs
- reimbursements
- quadrupled
- soaring
- escalated
- kidney dialysis machine
- transplants
- inflationary rise
- appalling