Though that’s a silver lining in a pretty dark cloud given that growth in health care premiums in this state matched growth in wages.

Nationally, health care premiums outpaced wages at the rate of 6.4 percent.

South Carolina had the worst rate, with premiums growing 9.9 times as fast as average earnings. Michigan and Ohio followed.

North Dakota had the lowest gap, with premiums growing at one time the rate of wage growth.

The report, based on information from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor, found:

-- Family insurance premiums for workers rose an average of 145 percent, or $1,883 - from $1,293 to $3,175 a year - while employers’ shares rose $3,816, from $5,761 to $9,577

-- Individual health insurance premiums rose an average of $415, or 88 percent (from $471 to $887) for workers and $1,745 for employers, from $2,214 to $3,958.

-- Median earnings rose 24 percent, from $22,155 to $27,515.

While we’re on the subject of wages and the cost of health care, it’s worth noting that total compensation (wages plus benefits) has been on the rise for a while now, driven mostly increases in compensation in the form of health benefits.  Which tells us that not only are workers paying more for health care, but their employers are paying more for it as well.

Which sort of throws a monkey wrench into the left’s rather obtuse “the American working man is getting screwed” argument.  It isn’t just the working stiff getting screwed by these high health care prices, it’s businesses too who are struggling to shoulder their share of the health care burden.  The cost of health care in general, for everyone in the nation, is skyrocketing.  Something must be done to reign it in, and no liberals socialized universal health care isn’t going to cut it.  We already have a government medical system for health care and disability.  It’s called Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and we’re already spending some $3 billion a day on it, an amount that grows at an 8% annual clip.

I don’t even want to think about what the bill would be for taxpayers if we tried socialized medicine for everyone.  Or, more likely, what sort of system inefficiencies, limitations and annoyances we’d have to deal with in a government-administered system.

The problem with our current health care system is that most of us in it don’t feel the real burden of doctor visits.  Oh, sure, we all pay our premiums...but how many of you even know exactly how much your premium is?  I’m guessing most of you don’t know it because it comes out of your check automatically.  Most of us just know that we have an insurance card that entitles us to pretty much all the health care we want for the price of a co-pay or a deductible.  And therein lies the rub.

Not enough Americans take care of themselves to avoid doctor visits because not enough Americans feel the financial impact of their health choices.  And no Americans shop around for health care.  We never ask ourselves how much one hospital charges compared to another, and this lack of traditional market forces is what allows hospitals to charge pretty much whatever they want.  We don’t care what they charge us, really, because the insurance company is footing the bill.

I can tell you that if more Americans were made directly responsible for paying their own medical bills not only would we see more people taking better care of themselves, we’d also see people being choosy when it came to where they’d go for treatment.  That choosiness would result in more options for medical care as hospitals and clinics competed for business.

If we stay on the course we’re on the cost of health care is going to drag this country into financial ruin.  At some point we’re just going to have to face the music and start holding individuals responsible for paying for health care rather than insurance companies, businesses or the government.