We are mired in a health care crisis.
On one side, you have a flawed system of primarily employer-provided health care insurance with rising premiums. Opposite that, you have calls for so-called universal health care, where state or federal governments foot the bills using taxpayer dollars or potentially issue mandates for private citizens to somehow pony up for coverage.
Unfortunately, neither the status quo nor universal health care is a solution to our woes.
By now, you’re probably feeling the impact of double-digit increases on your annual corporate renewal. And in an effort to keep the costs down, many of you shifted more costs to your employees either through a higher percentage of premium cost or high deductibles they need to pay before actual coverage kicks in.
On the surface, this makes perfect sense. Asking employees to share in the cost should cause them to make better-informed decisions with regard to their personal health and health-care-related decisions.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with this that isn’t the employers’ faults.
The cost of living is increasing faster than the average company’s annual raise for nonmanagerial staff. And when you add in premium sharing, a high out-of-pocket deductible and even prescription drug costs, like it or not, your company’s value proposition for attracting and retaining top employees might not have the shine it used to when a competitor realizes that many of today’s college graduates — and certainly more seasoned talent — rank benefits as high as starting salary.
Don’t get me wrong, the alternate certainly isn’t any better.
Government-sponsored health care is not a panacea and hasn’t proven successful in other countries. Details for such a monumental industry shift are sketchy at best, and no one has been able to articulate how it would effectively work. How would we shift the financial burden away from private employers without a major disruption in ongoing health care treatment? And, who really is paying the bill?
A hard, long look at the problem by a coalition of business owners, insurance companies, government and employees would be a step toward developing a better solution. But unfortunately, that’s not going to happen until everyone wakes up and realizes we are headed for a disaster far worse than the current subprime mortgage mess. If not, the eddy we’re getting sucked into is going to get stronger. <<
Contact Editor Dustin Klein at [email protected]