Posted on 04/02/2006 10:07:11 PM PDT by neverdem
IN the past five years, private health insurance premiums have risen 73 percent. Some businesses have responded by dropping healthcare coverage, leaving employees uninsured. Other employers pass the costs on to workers, both by raising co-payments and premiums and by denying workers the wage increases they need to afford these higher prices.
What is driving this unsustainable run-up in health insurance costs, and how can we make things better?
Health care is expensive because the vast majority of Americans consume it as if it were free. Health insurance policies with low deductibles insulate people from the cost of the medical care they use so much so that they often do not even ask for prices. And people don't recognize the high premium costs of this low-deductible insurance because premiums are paid by employers. Finally, the tax code subsidizes these expensive, employer-purchased insurance policies.
To control health care costs, we must give consumers an incentive to spend money wisely. We can do this by encouraging the purchase of high-deductible policies and providing the same tax benefits for out-of-pocket health spending that employer-provided insurance enjoys. The overall cost to the consumer will be no greater than it is now and, in most cases, significantly lower. And no consumer is better than the American consumer at driving prices down and quality up.
The president has proposed a package of reforms that will spur such changes by building on the success of consumer-directed Health Savings Accounts and the insurance policies that go with them. Health Savings Accounts allow people to save money tax-free to pay their out-of-pocket health costs, as long as they have high-deductible health policies to cover catastrophic expenses. Enrollment in these accounts has grown rapidly since their introduction in 2003, with more than three million people now contributing to them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
doesn't korea have universal insurance?
They may have something like that but even with that they still pay something which is why they check finances before any medical procedure. And maybe one of the items the must have is their universal card. The only thing that I know is that everyone must have their payments paid before any procedure and that could be having some sort of insurance.
The author makes a very important point here . . . health care costs in this country are rising simply because most people "buy" medical care as if it's free.
What makes a medical savings account so attractive is that you should raise the deductible every year when you don't meet the previous year's cap. If I can put aside $5,000 per year to cover medical deductibles and I only use $2,000 during my first year in the plan, then my deductible for the second year should be raised to $8,000 -- which includes the $3,000 I didn't use from Year 1 plus another $5,000 for Year 2.
LOL. True, but I think that get the dependents. That is funny though.
Thanks for the comment. I'll check it out. I'm up for renewal fairly soon.
You know what, I don't have a problem with that. Pay higher wages and let the employee sort it out. What I will tell you though, is that with outsourcing, illegal immigration and foreign trade, I think you're kidding yourself if you think wages are going to escalate enough for people to buy their own insurance.
Under such a plan, I'd predict that employers will raise salaries to cover about 50% of the cost they are now paying, and let the employees pick up the tab for the rest out of their current salary. In effect, that will result in a wage cut for just about every person who had healthcare thorugh their employer.
Thanks. My response in 49 to another poster fits your comments as well.
I know this sounds harsh, but that's exactly the way it should be. Since the employee is the one who is being covered, and who is making all of his health-related decisions, it is the employee who should be covering the cost of his own insurance. It would obviously help if there were a transition period similar to what I described above, but that is only a temporary situation. The end result would eventually be employees paying 100% of their medical costs, and employers freed from an enormous anchor on their operations.
What I will tell you though, is that with outsourcing, illegal immigration and foreign trade, I think you're kidding yourself if you think wages are going to escalate enough for people to buy their own insurance.
Right. In other words, people can't afford the quality of the health care they're now getting. They just don't know it yet.
What you have essentially agreed to here, is that with illgal immigration, outsourcing and foreign trade, the ability for workers in the U.S. to maintain medical coverage is vanishing.
I agree. You cannot saturate a working environment with as many alternatives as we are without wages declining to the point that the U.S. Citizen will lose benefits.
I guess we should be happy we can still afford to eat for the time being.
I don't forsee an economy that will sustain 100% of our workforce owning their own businesses any time soon. God help the rest.
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