MACKINAC ISLAND – Health care costs that continue to grow will force more companies to eliminate or constrain health insurance. But several experts at the Detroit Regional Chamber conference said expanding access to health care and convincing Americans they may have to sacrifice some benefits could help controls costs.

This sobering assessment came as attendees heard about studies that showed costs at Michigan’s hospitals are now the lowest in the Great Lakes region and lower than hospital costs nationwide. The study also showed that if Michigan’s hospital costs were at the national average, state consumers would have paid about $1 billion more a year.

This assessment stands in stark contrast to the national health care picture, where Paul Ginsburg with the Center for Studying Health Policy Change, said health care costs have grown at 2.5 percent faster than the gross domestic product for the past 30 years.

Ginsburg said the latest concern, that the rapidly aging Baby Boomers will further escalate health care costs, was less a factor than an obese population, the use of technology and drugs.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) said improving overall access to health care is critical to both cost controls and overall quality. She said the United States spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care and yet has an estimated 46 million people without coverage. The nation has to look at health care as a right and not a privilege in order to address the issue.

“We cannot continue to cut costs, cut access and continue to pay more,” she said.

Ginsburg said one of the most powerful tools to expand coverage is to contain costs. Increasing access to health care cost could be a motivator to addressing costs, he said. Although, Ginsburg said America’s leaders have not leveled with the public that what is needed is to lower health care costs will mean sacrifice, whether through higher taxes or reduced benefits.

But Dallas Salisbury of the Employee Benefit Research Institute said the public already is enduring many sacrifices because as people pay more for health care they are saving less for their retirements and getting deeper into credit card debt.

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