If you or a loved one has suffered a serious personal injury in the last 10 years and been subjected to our current health care system, the need for reform is probably obvious to you.

We here at Legal blog have written extensively on how health care reform is necessary and how it will benefit injury victims, health care consumers in general, and everyone (click here for posts on how heath care reform impacts injury victims and consumers).

But believe it or not, there still appears to be a group of folks – namely Republican congressmen and women – who actually believe that the status quo is better then any of the proposed reforms.  Well, we now have some pretty good examples of what will happen if reforms are not enacted.

First, as we saw yesterday (and as was discussed here on Legal Blog) California’s largest insurer is set to spike rates as much as 39% for individual policies.  Without meaningful reforms, these spikes will become common place.  And they will effectively price individuals out of the health insurance market, which means greater strain on our hospitals because they will be treating more and more injury victims and members of the public who do not have health insurance.

Second, without meaningful reform over 40 million Americans will continue without health insurance coverage.  And what this means is that many of our nation’s hospitals will not have a viable business model going forward.

According to the New York Times, the costs to hospitals associated with unpaid medical care and treatment because patients do not have heath insurance was approximately $36 billion in 2008.  And without reforms meant to provide coverage to these individuals, coupled with more people being priced out of health insurance due to rate hikes like the one in California, this figure is expected to spiral higher and higher.

In 2014 there could be as many as 58 million people without health insurance in this country.  The problem with that statistic is simple: it will eventually lead to bankruptcy for our state and federal government as more and more people come to depend on the government for health care and costs continue to spiral upward.

As analyzed by the New York Times in today’s paper – hospitals work like this: you have patients that don’t have insurance at all, you have patients that rely on Medicare and Medicaid, and then you have those with private insurance.  Hospitals have to eat the costs associated with the folks without insurance, they are paid a lower rate for their services under Medicare and Medicaid.  So they charge insurance companies a higher rate to make up the difference.  Hospitals must perform a high-wire balancing act in order not to fall into a financial abyss.

Well, 58 million uninsured will make that fall all but certain.

Tags: San Francisco injury attorney Brett A. Burlison comments on the impact failing to reform health care will have on hospitals.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Health care reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.