Monthly Archive for October, 2010

“A fast second”

How much longer?

I might have chosen the word “quick”.  But it is a great quote.

In June I wrote:

After the insurance exchanges are up and running, I predict that one of the big private employer plans, bowing to competitive pressures and other “economic realities”, will pull the plug on its employer sponsored health care plan.  That will start a mass exodus that will topple the private employer sponsored market in a very short time.

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar wrote today in Capital Hill Blue about the threat to employer provided health insurance:

“I don’t think you are going to hear anybody publicly say ‘We’ve made a decision to drop insurance,’ ” said Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. “What we are hearing in our meetings is, ‘We don’t want to be the first one to drop benefits, but we would be the fast second.’ We are hearing that a lot.” Deloitte is a major accounting and consulting firm.

When everyone is trying to be a “fast second” that becomes a mass exodus.

Alonzo-Zaldivar even cites the Democratic Governor of Tennessee as supporting the logic of employers dropping their health plans.

That health care could be decoupled from employment is a good thing.  That everyone could be thrown on an individual insurance market is not.

The warning bells are sounding.

Photo credit:  FLICKR