Carol Pryor Cost Quotations

The findings again call into question the whole approach of shifting more costs onto consumers with consumer-driven health care. If you look at a single mom with a kid at twice the poverty level and you look at the required deductible, it's already about 7.5 percent of income and that excludes the cost of the premium and other out-of-pocket costs.

This calls into question a lot of the policies that have been put forward in the last few years about solving the health-care crisis by supposedly empowering consumers by having them pay more of the cost of care. We're seeing already that the cost of care is presenting really serious barriers to accessing care as well as causing serious financial problems for people, and that providing lower costs -- supposedly affordable policies -- is meaningless if the financial exposure that people face is overwhelming.