Health reform needed, stat

Opinion: October 3, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Kansas City Star: Unemployment hovers above 9 percent. Home values remain depressed. Small businesses can’t gain traction for growth. Politics and life are so unsure the U.S. credit rating has been downgraded from AAA status.

But against this backdrop, a new report indicates that health insurance rates on the average family plan this year increased 9 percent, three times the rate of inflation.

Insurance companies blame an increase in the cost of care. The news is compelling evidence for why we need health care reform.

The unconscionable cost increases accelerate a trend of Americans paying more than anyone on earth for health care. Each American spent an average of $7,410 in 2009. That’s almost double the payments in other developed nations, including those with higher overall costs of living, according to World Health Organization data. We each paid almost triple what a Japanese resident did — $2,713.

And yet for all this spending, our life expectancy remains comparatively low. The conclusion is clear: We’re overpaying for health care.

Full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which comes in 2014, is expected to finally begin to clamp down on those costs. Until then, the current dismal numbers show a health care industry taking advantage of a nation while shirking reasonable and needed attempts to control expenses.

What is now derisively called Obamacare can’t come soon enough.