By NYCeve (Eve Gittelson)

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

This chart is a picture worth 1000 words.

It’s a sobering look at where we’ll be in ten years without healthcare reform. If we get the “pass something” reform the political class wants to label reform, and this “something” doesn’t include a public option, President Obama will “own” (his words), a terrible concept which will do nothing to bend the cost curve.

Health insurance premiums for a family could rise to $30,000 within 10 years.

Here are some more numbers worth remembering.

The average cost of a family health insurance policy in 2009 was $13,375.

Over the past ten years, premiums have increased by 131 percent, while wages have grown 38 percent and inflation has grown 28 percent.

If health-care costs grow as fast as they have over the past five years, the average premium for a family policy in 2019 will be $24,180. If they grow as fast as they have over the past 10 years, premiums in 2019 will average $30,803.

Our healthcare system is on life support. Without a public option, we have accomplished exactly nothing, other than nationalizing Romneycare.

Speaking of Romneycare. The front page of the Boston Globe this morning should be a grim warning about the consequences of making Romneycare the law of the land.

The Massachusetts catastrophe situation is what happens when you mandate people purchase for-profit junk insurance without offering a public option. Costs are spiraling upward, and employers are shifting more and more of the financial burden onto the shoulders of employees. People in Massachusetts are paying much more for much less—they’re buying bare bones junk insurance.

Skyrocketing premiums and the inability of Americans to even afford what amount to high deductible junk insurance has profound real world consequences just ask Los Angeles pediatrician Alex Blum.

In a heart wrenching and deeply disturbing opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Blum describes a very young patient destroyed for life simply because the family could not access affordable healthcare.

Along with every other pediatrician I know, I have seen far too often the unconscionable consequences of children not having healthcare coverage. One case still haunts me.

In the middle of one night during my training at a county hospital outside of Los Angeles, a 12-year-old boy arrived at the emergency room. He was having a seizure. From a brain scan, we made the terrible diagnosis: He had suffered a massive stroke. At best, he would be severely disabled for the rest of his life.

When I sat down with his mother to tell her the bad news, she told me that he had been a happy, healthy child through most of grade school. But there had been one other trip to the hospital. When he was 7, he’d had a stroke from which he recovered quickly and completely. His mother had been instructed to take him to a specialist to find out what was wrong so he would not have another stroke. But she was the family’s sole provider and simply could not afford the expensive out-of-pocket bills.

Dr. Blum is correct, we have a healthcare catastrophe.

Until the system changes, health catastrophes like this will continue to be commonplace in America. Until we reform the system, Americans will continue to be forced to choose between feeding their families and taking them to the doctor.

And it is not only the destitute who need change. In my clinic, I have quietly comforted countless parents who are jobless and struggling to pay hundreds of dollars in monthly COBRA payments. The reality for most Americans is that your insurance is only as secure as your job. And in this economy, that’s not much comfort.

If the “pass something” crowd is successful, and we don’t have a public option as part of healthcare reform, we will continue the terrible slide—no American should have to choose between food and healthcare.

Shame on this great country.