The Bush recession and widespread job losses have caused millions of workers and their families to lose coverage. Approximately 2.4 million workers and their families have lost the health insurance their jobs provided since the current economic downturn started. Health care facilities are greatly overburdened by the increasing tide of uninsured Americans.

Faced with declining tax revenues and huge expenditures for corporate bailouts, some areasking if we can afford asking whether we can afford health care reform. Some suggest that we need to abandon the growing numbers of medically underserved and unserved until some future date when we can afford a luxury like a health care system that works for everyone. A new report from the Center for American Progress suggests that we can't afford to wait -- that health care reform will help pay for the economic recovery and that the existing dysfunctional system is one of the greatest drains on the economy.

An America without health care reform is an America where families face ever-higher health insurance premiums, businesses drop coverage and trim employee benefits, doctors lack access to objective information about the treatments they provide, and millions of Americans live just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. It’s an America that spends billions on tests and treatments that cannot be shown to improve health—even as more than 50 million people go without health insurance.

The cost of a family premium under employer-provided health insurance will increase by approximately 20 percent (after inflation) over the next four years, and by 70 percent in less than a decade. A 20 percent increase in premiums will cost 3.5 million workers their jobs, cause millions more to move from full-time to part-time work, and cut the average American income by approximately $1,700. The effects will cascade across the economy stifling recovery and costing taxpayers more than $9 trillion over the next 25 years.