Health and medical insurance costs have skyrocketed in the last few years, growing much more quickly than the overall rate of inflation. A study conducted earlier this year highlights just how bad things could get if there isn’t some kind of health care reform. The study, published January 28th of this year by the Public Interest Research Group, estimates that employer-paid family health policy programs will more than double in their costs between now and 2016 if there aren’t major reforms to stop the current trends.

The current path of soaring health insurance costs is a vicious cycle that does a whole lot of harm to the economy of the United States and the world as a whole. Employers are being forced to pay a whole lot more to offer health insurance programs to their employees, and in turn employees are being forced to pay much higher premiums for similar or lesser health care coverage.

This has led to many Americans beginning to opt out of certain parts of their medical insurance plans, and even some Americans being forced to drop insurance coverage altogether. Some Americans are placing the blame squarely on their employer, which isn’t that fair since the employer in many cases is being squeezed by the rise in their costs to offer those medical insurance programs to the employee.

Some companies are trumpeting plans such as high-deductible health savings plans as cheaper options for health insurance. That sounds great until someone in your family gets quite sick and you realize the coverage you have really is the bare minimum and you are paying extremely high percentages of the medical costs.

Simply put there is no easy way to avoid the soaring cost of medical insurance. As an individual you must pay up for health insurance if you can at all, because the costs of not doing so are even more harmful. Let’s hope that healthcare reform becomes a real goal of congress and government as a whole, and soon. It may take some compromising on both sides of the aisle, but Americans need action and they need it taken quickly.