LETTER: Forced spending on insurance has forgotten effect

Much of the recent discussion about increased health-care premiums, in my opinion, has left out a crucial devastating by-product; that being, that when an individual, or family, has a yearly out-of-pocket expense increase of several or many thousands of dollars (deductibles and lack of access or care notwithstanding), the effect will be less purchasing power and thus less spending.

Less spent on vehicles, entertainment, food consumption outside the home, household related purchases, clothing, retail items, transportation of those goods, etc. — not to mention the negative impact on all of the families that are supported by those sales. The lack of consumer expediture on those items could cripple or even bankrupt many businesses, large to small.

For all the talk of government spending, high-flying financials, petroleum products, and the tech market, domestic consumer spending drives the majority of growth in our economy; strangle that spending and you will have essentially killed any prospect of future growth. —Sheldon Wickersham, Creston