I’m sure some will point to this as an indicator that we don’t need health care reform:

Spending on health care slowed in 2008, according to a government report released Tuesday. In fact, health spending grew more slowly than at any time in at least a half century.

[SNIP]

“National health spending growth slowed in 2008 to 4.4 percent, the slowest rate of growth in the National Health Expenditure Accounts.”

In other words, the slowest growth since the government has kept records.

Of course the people who call this good news would be wrong:

There’s still more bad news, says Rick Foster, the chief actuary at HHS. A major reason health spending slowed is that with the bad economy, many people simply couldn’t afford medical care.

“In many cases they lost their employee-sponsored health benefits at the same time they lost their jobs. So that meant that the cost of care was much much higher because they had to pay it out of pocket. So some people presumably scaled back on their purchases.”

People haven’t suddenly gotten healthier, nor has the health care industry done some major rate reductions. Instead more people can’t afford to seek health care when they are sick. The richest nation on earth and we have people who can’t afford to see a doctor when they fall ill. That alone is a crime and the fact that it happens here really shows that this is anything but a Christian nation.