Median Family Income Has Dropped 2.6 Percent While Bush in Office

One has to wonder how much more of the GOP economic plan the American public can take. The economy is seriously tanking, gasoline prices are at an all time high as are foreclosures, and now a report shows that working class Americans are making less today than in 2000. It would seem that rather than trying to continually knee cap Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton ought to be talking about what really matters to Americans. Oops, I forgot - it's all about Hillary and her sense of entitlement to the presidency. From my involvement representing hospital systems at various times over the years, if non-profit health care/hospital systems spent less time playing monopoly like games to lock up the provision of services and more time focusing on the delivery of cost efficient health care services, the price escalation would be less and the nation's citizens would be better served. In any event, here are highlights from the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301770.html?hpid=topnews):

Recent history has not been kind to working-class Americans, who were down on the economy long before the word recession was uttered. The main reason: spiraling health-care costs have been whacking away at their wages. Even though workers are producing more, inflation-adjusted median family income has dipped 2.6 percent -- or nearly $1,000 annually since 2000.
Employees and employers are getting squeezed by the price of health care. The struggle to control health costs is viewed as crucial to improving wages and living standards for working Americans. Employers are paying more for health care and other benefits, leaving less money for pay increases.

Since 2001, premiums for family health coverage have increased 78 percent, according to a 2007 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Premiums averaged $12,106, of which workers paid $3,281, according to the report. The runaway cost of health care has long been a concern, largely because of the huge number of Americans -- estimated at 47 million -- who are uninsured. But health-care costs are re-emerging as an economic and political issue in part because of the role they play in the stubborn problem of stagnating wages.

Researchers Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Victor R. Fuchs say that employer-sponsored health-care plans create the "myth" that workers are getting their health benefits for little or nothing. But, in fact, "workers and households pay for health insurance through lower wages and higher prices," they wrote in the March 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.