TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Bill Radke: Health care is the subject of this morning’s Marketplace Globalist quiz with our quizmaster Stephan Richter of TheGlobalist.com. Good morning.
Stephan Richter: Good morning, Bill. Are you ready for today’s Globalist quiz?
Radke: Ready as ever.
Ricther: So here’s my question for you: In 10 years time, what will a family like yours or mine pay in the United States in health insurance in a given year? Will it be A. $13,000 a year, B. $19,000 a year, C. $24,000 D. or even $31,000.
Radke: Annual insurance premiums?
Ricther: Mmhm.
Radke: When I don’t know, I go with C. $24,000.
Ricther: That’s always a safe option, but you’re off. It’s even higher than that. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the average employer-provided health insurance policy is currently on track to cost about $31,000 in 2019.
Radke: $31,000 in premiums, and help me out here — what’s the average family income in the United States?
Ricther: The average family income is around $50,000. So that means that a significant chunk of anything that you and I, and our spouses and everybody else, will labor for will be eaten up by health-care costs.
Radke: Like they say in “A Christmas Carol,” are these things that will be or only might be?
Ricther: Might be. And hopefully we can stem the tide. If you assume that health-care costs will increase a little less, than you will be right. It will be $24,000 a year. But we all stand with bated breath and see what they get accomplished in Washington. Currently it doesn’t look like we get those costs under sufficient control for families not to have to work for health care most of their time.
Radke: Some sobering numbers. Thanks for joining us, Stephan.
Ricther: Good to have been with you. Bye.
Radke: Stephan Richter is publisher and editor-in-chief of TheGlobalist.com — the daily online magazine on the global economy, politics and culture.
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