Today’s San Mateo County Times reports that employees are now paying more of health care costs: “The average employer-provided health plan now costs workers nearly $4,000 a year, up 14 percent from last year…. At the same time, workers also saw average co-payments for routine office visits rise 10 percent and deductibles continue their surge upwards.”

From my own experience, here are two other things to wonder about: (1) My last two employers could no longer afford to pay for health care for spouses of workers — in many couples, both spouses need to work, not for the additional paycheck, but in order to be able to afford health care. (2) Twice in the past three years, my health insurance provider refused to pay $1,000 of a health care bill, once for a doctor’s office visit, and once for a visit to the emergency room — even if you have health insurance, you can no longer be sure that your insurer will actually pay your health costs.

And here’s something else to wonder about: Both the liberals and the conservatives have been completely unable to address the problem of how to pay for health care. The conservatives offer free-market solutions, when it’s quite clear that the health care industry is not a free market. The liberals offer government health plans, when it’s quite clear that the U.S. government is not presently able to fund additional health care. So what’s going to happen? No one knows. At this point, the only thing you can do is stay perfectly healthy. And that’s when fear creeps in: what will happen if I develop some serious illness? How much of my care will I have to provide? Will I become another health care bankruptcy case?