Inflation continues to hit Americans in the pocketbook, thanks to rising food and and energy costs. But there's even more sticker shock on the way for another major expense. New projections show healthcare costs rising anywhere from 5.4% to 8.5% in 2024. That easily surpasses the latest annual inflation rate of 3.7%, and would be the largest increase in healthcare costs in a decade. "There are two big factors in this," says Todd Furniss, author of 'The 60% Solution: Rethinking Healthcare.' "Labor costs are going up, and secondly we have great price increases in most of the expensive drugs."
While overall inflation has slowed down in recent months, healthcare often lags other sectors, which could signal even larger increases ahead. "Healthcare costs will continue to go up, and they will go up at a rate that is likely to be greater than inflation, year-over-year," says Furniss.
The bottom line is 13 years after Obamacare a.k.a. 'The Affordable Care Act' was signed into law, the neverending cycle of rising health care costs remains. Furniss argues this cycle will continue, regardless of inflation, until and unless we switch to a more consumer-based healthcare system. "By focusing everybody on insurance and removing consumerism from healthcare, we've created a broken system," he tells KTRH. "As a result, we never know what the price of anything is, and we are constantly fearful that we're going to be unable to pay for our healthcare needs."
"It is an absolutely preposterous system that is perpetuated by all of the people in D.C. and in Austin with a vested interest in continuing the same processes," Furniss continues. "Nobody (in charge) seems to have a genuine interest in reducing the price of healthcare."