If yesterday's graphic didn't scare you, this one might help you get the gist of why REAL healthare reform is critical to the costs your organization incurs for healthcare, as well as for the entire country, and especially for the taxpayers (and your children/grandchildren) that will foot the burden of out-of-control healthcare cost growth.

Some may ask why I'm on a soapbox about healthcare reform recently, and the answer is really quite simple.  Healthcare reform, without real reform, is just another way to pump even more money into the machine that is slowly but surely bankrupting our country. 

The current plans on the table, while offering some "mini" reforms, basically just pump another trillion or so dollars into the same high margin, fee-for-service machine that has led to a never-ending spiral of cost increases several times the overall rate of inflation for the past few decades (even in the 2008-2009 economic slump, the worst in decades, healthcare costs are expected to rise in low double digits annually, even while consumers are cutting back on medical care!).

Of course, most Americans are concerned about what come out of their pocket for care, and that's understandable.  But what I believe many fail to realize is someone is paying for all the care that you're not paying for, and those "someones" are your employer, your government, your children and grandchildren, and you (indirectly, through taxes and deficits).

So, even if you think you're not paying for it, you really are, because it is built into the cost of the goods you buy, the massive deficits we're racking up, higher cost your employers are paying (which otherwise might go towards pay increases or hiring, but those costs are diverted to healthcare instead).

The healthcare crisis in America is not going away, with or without the current plans on the table.  It's time for all Americans to demand real reform (at least if you're concerned about the world you, your children and grandchildren will live in, in the the coming decades).  Reform that will restrict and/or eliminate the current fee-for-service model, and move towards evidence-based treatments, outcome-based payments, best-practice models, and yes, even some reasoned rationing, because everybody can't have everything they want (at little or no out-of-pocket cost, of course) and not expect the costs to soar.

I feel better, now that I've blown off some steam!  Please do you part.  This really is a crisis, even if you don't feel it yet.