Time creates statistics as long as certain types of information are available, the actual money that goes into the healthcare system is one of the least understood realities people should be concerned about, understanding how much money is going into the healthcare system in it's entirety puts a different perspective on how much healthcare costs for the entire population.
During the ACA americans are being destroyed by healthcare costs, even people who have healthcare, who pay substantial money into premiums and copays. Polls that we don't generally see indicate that there are millions of people who are holding off on procedures they need because of the cost, we are talking as much as 30% of the public. During the 2007/2008 crash, when foreclosure rates were at record levels, 25% of foreclosures were due to medical expenses, and many of these people had healthcare, it's the hidden tax, the hidden wealth breaker. Those houses I was looking at in 2009 that were bank owned, they were upper middle income $800k houses, 3500 sq ft. We saw several who's owners we talked to said they had had a few hundred grand in equity, and a few hundred thousand in the bank, and their comfortable cash margins were wiped out from heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.
Since 2008 we are seeing exactly the same thing, 25% of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. This is wiping out people's comfort zones and the financial security they work hard to set themselves up with. Nobody gets hit harder than self employed people who have their own moderate sized businesses. They get hammered by insurance costs, then when they have catastrophic healthcare problems they get hammered by copays that hit them for hundreds of thousands.
Drug costs are one of the huge drivers, and the reality is that drug costs have increased at an even higher rate under the ACA than they were. The ACA is allowing drug costs to climb at ludicrous rates, rates that should have been curbed decades ago. Getting the ACA passed took concessions to those representing drug interests that created this.
The industry is an example of profits run amuck, a multiple sclerosis drug that used to be $8k to $11k is now $80k, nothing changed for the drug company except their greed and profit margin, and the fact that the government has been prohibited from doing anything about prices. Cancer drugs cost from lows in the thousands a week, to tens and hundreds of thousand. The best and most expensive are used by people with excellent government healthcare plans.
This article has a lot of interesting statistical information, and it has no partisan axe to grind here, it is covering a piece of how expensive our current healthcare system is. Healthcare and what it costs people is a hidden thing we should be looking at with an unbiased eye toward solutions...and protecting ludicrous profits for drug companies needs to stop.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/what-strong-economy-health-care-costs-are-destroying-american-families/