Center for Policy Research

Report

Our Troubled Health Care System. Why Is It So Hard to Fix?

Judy Feder

December 2007

Introduction

This report draws heavily on Judith Feder, 2004, "Crowd-Out and the Politics of Health Reform," The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 32(3): 461-464. We all know that affordable health care is now back on the political agenda, and it's about time! Because all of us--families, businesses, and governments--are struggling with the ever-increasing costs of care. Every year about a million people are added to the rolls of the uninsured. In 2006, it was even more, over 2 million. The number of people without health insurance coverage has reached more than 47 million. People *with* insurance are seeing their benefits dwindle and their health care costs consume their wages. Even people with health insurance find themselves unable to pay their medical bills and going without needed care. The bottom line is that, increasingly, our health insurance system fails to protect us when we get sick.

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This report is sponsered by The Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture series, which is jointly sponsored by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the Central New York Community Foundation, Inc. and is administered by the Center for Policy Research and The Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health.

The Center for Policy Research at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University supports policy-relevant research and disseminates knowledge that enables leaders to make informed policy decisions and provide effective solutions to critical challenges in our local region, state, country and across the world.