{"id":2874,"date":"2010-08-25T12:56:41","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T16:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=2874"},"modified":"2010-08-25T12:56:41","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T16:56:41","slug":"comparing-health-care-costs-to-median-income","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/25\/comparing-health-care-costs-to-median-income\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing health care costs to median income"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got a look at a benefits statement for a 40-year-old worker at a large Boston-area employer. This worker has a medical and dental plan that covers a family of two adults and one child. The deductibles are low, which makes these costs a good estimate of the total expected cost of health care for this family. Massachusetts already has a universal coverage system almost identical to the one the U.S. will adopt nationwide in 2014, so the cost in Massachusetts today is probably a good guide to what health care will cost nationally.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the numbers: $19,022 for membership in an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/HMO\">HMO<\/a>, which was supposed to be the magic bullet for controlling health care costs in the U.S; $1,781 for dental; total = $20,803.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s compare this to median income in the U.S. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/hhes\/www\/income\/income.html\"> The Census Bureau<\/a> estimates that median household income in 2008 was $52,029, which might include two working parents plus the kid&#8217;s lemonade stand revenues. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/oes\/current\/oes_nat.htm\">Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a> says that the median hourly income in the U.S. was $15.95 in May 2009, which works out to $31,900 for a person working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year.<\/p>\n<p>When you consider that local, state, and federal governments need to collect substantial tax revenues from the median worker in order to fund their near-50% share of the U.S. economy, this means that health care for a small family is likely to consume 100 percent of the after-tax income of a typical U.S. worker.<\/p>\n<p>Another way to look at this is that we&#8217;ve produced a great health care system for rich people, but we forgot to make most Americans rich!<\/p>\n<p>[The mismatch between income and ability to pay for health care should be widening. Median wages in the U.S. are surely falling, if only because so many Americans now have a wage of $0. Health care and health insurance costs have risen every year in both Massachusetts and nationally. Sources: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shrm.org\/hrdisciplines\/benefits\/Articles\/Pages\/HealthCostForecast.aspx\">A 2009 article on health care inflation outpacing salary increases<\/a>; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibj.com\/even-with-inflation-gone-health-costs-surge\/PARAMS\/article\/21876\">an article today comparing health costs to reported inflation<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got a look at a benefits statement for a 40-year-old worker at a large Boston-area employer. This worker has a medical and dental plan that covers a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Comparing health care costs to median income - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/25\/comparing-health-care-costs-to-median-income\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comparing health care costs to median income - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I got a look at a benefits statement for a 40-year-old worker at a large Boston-area employer. 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