How can insurance premiums be capped at 10 percent of income?
March 28th, 2008 by 
David E. Williams of the Health business blog
The big news today is that Hillary Clinton wants universal coverage that will cap health insurance premiums at 5 to 10 percent of a family’s income, regardless of income. Considering that health care represents 16 percent of the GDP (i.e., income) and rising that number doesn’t seem too realistic. From the transcript:
Q: You’ve also said you would cap premiums. But you haven’t said where you would cap them.
MRS. CLINTON: You know, I think we could do it somewhere between five and 10 percent of income.
The median household income in the US is about $50,000 per year. I can tell you that $2500 to $5000 won’t buy much in the way of health insurance for a family.
Of course I’m describing matters in an overly simplistic way. Medicare is where the big money is spent. But of course even low wage earners who lack health insurance already pay into that system through FICA deductions, not to mention the spending that comes out of general taxation revenues.
Health care in the US is expensive. Mandating caps on premium costs won’t solve that problem.
Posted in Economics, Policy and politics | 
4 Comments »
March 29th, 2008 at 7:00 am
[...] How can insurance premiums be capped at 10 percent of income? The big news today is that Hillary Clinton wants universal coverage that will cap health insurance premiums at 5 to 10 percent of a family’s income, regardless of income. Considering that health care represents 16 percent of the GDP (i.e., income) and rising that number doesn’t seem too realistic. From the transcript: Q: You ve also said […] [...]
March 29th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
[...] The big news today is that Hillary Clinton wants universal coverage that will cap health insurance premiums at 5 to 10 percent of a family’s income, regardless of income. Considering that health care represents 16 percent of the GDP (i.e., income) and rising that number doesn’t seem too realistic. From the transcript: Q: You ve also said […] Read more [...]
March 29th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
[...] How can insurance premiums be capped at 10 percent of income? The big news today is that Hillary Clinton wants universal coverage that will cap health insurance premiums at 5 to 10 percent of a family’s income, regardless of income. Considering that health care represents 16 percent of the GDP (i.e., income) and rising that number doesn’t seem too realistic. From the transcript: Q: You ve also said […] Fatal error: Call to undefined function add_submit_it() in /home/s0329a42/public_html/wpnews/wp-content/themes/adsminded/single.php on line 24 [...]
March 31st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
[...] David Williams at the Health Business Blog has written a post about Clinton’s plan to cap health insurance premiums at 5% – 10% of a family’s income. With a US median income of nearly $50,000/year, health insurance premiums would be somewhere in the range of $2500 – $5000/year, which as Mr. Williams points out, doesn’t buy a whole lot in our current health insurance system. [...]