Health Care Costs will be higher than half of country's income by 2037

A study has concluded in two doctors stating that health insurance will cost more than the median income of an American household by 2037.

According to an article published in the journal, Annals of Family Medicine, the reason would be that wages for U.S. workers are stagnating and health care costs are rising way too quickly so health insurance premiums will exceed income for many Americans in the coming decades.

Richard Young of John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth-Texas, and Jennifer DeVoe of Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, who conducted the study, found the dark reality according to which insurance costs will reach the tipping point in 2033.

The reality is that if health insurance premiums and national wages continue to grow at recent rates and the U.S. health system makes no considerable structural changes, the average cost of a family health insurance premium will equal 50% of the household income by the year 2021, and outdo the average household income by the year 2033.

In a similar study published by DeVoe in 2005, she predicted that health insurance premiums will exceed the median income 8 to 12 years earlier. Nevertheless, according to Young and DeVoe the abatement isn't because anything good may have happened in the meantime.

The study showed that: sadly, the cost of health care is still going through the roof, mostly because people without jobs or insurance went without medical care during the economic decline. Also, those who had jobs had less money to spend on health care due to the fact that the average household income has declined from $50,300 in 2008 to $49,800 in 2009.

So what is there to be done, except encourage people to share the cost of care and this way reduce the cost, making it affordable for everybody.