Archive for the ‘Employer health insurance’ Category

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The Next Bailout? Employer Health Care

May 9, 2010
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Will health care reform support or undermine the employer-based system that provides health care coverage for the majority of working age adults?

Employer sponsored health care

Employer sponsored health care

According to a report by Fortune, several Fortune 500 employers have considered dumping the health care coverage they now offer to their employees.

Caterpillar, Deere, Verizon, AT&T, Bayer, and some other Fortune 500 companies have weighed the fines levied by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)against the cost of offering health insurance.

The fines win.  It’s cheaper to pay than to play.  Billions of dollars cheaper.

It’s not just the fines.

Fortune uncovered this story by combing through documents the companies submitted to Congress when Congress questioned the big tax write offs the companies took after after passage of PPACA.

The write offs, Congress learned, were legitimate.   Accounting rules require companies to account as a liability the future costs of retiree health care.  Those accounting rules are a big reason why the number of retirees covered by employer sponsored health insurance has dropped from over 40% to near 20% in the last twenty years. Continue reading ‘The Next Bailout? Employer Health Care’

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Health Care Reform: A Model for the Future – Here Now

March 6, 2010
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Imagine that an employer can hire professional talent for a day, a week or for years and not have to consider health care as a fixed cost.Job Loss shouldn't be fatal

Imagine that same professional talent is without work, whether through illness or simply lack of work, and yet does not have to worry about paying for health insurance.

Sound like a health reformers ideal.  Provide employers the flexibility to hire talent as needed.  Provide health care for workers even when they have no income.

This model exists now

This is the model of the multi-employer health & welfare plan.

Multi-employer plans are common in those unionized industries with seasonal or irregular employment: transportation, needle trades, construction trades, and theater trades, for example.  They are governed by a board with equal numbers of employers and union representatives.  Employers pay a negotiated rate per hour worked into the Fund and the Fund provides benefits through periods of employment and transitional unemployment.  Some funds are fiscally sound enough to provide benefits through retirement. Continue reading ‘Health Care Reform: A Model for the Future – Here Now’

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Health Care Reform – Scrap Employer Health Care

February 27, 2010
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The American Benefits Council, the preeminent advocate of employer-sponsored benefit programs in Washington D.C., offers this prescriptions for health care reform – build on what works.

Fit for the Scrap Heap

Fit for the Scrap Heap

Employer sponsored health insurance is not a system that works.  I say that as a 25 year employee benefits professional.

Despite what its proponents say in its support, their actions tell a different story.

Employers want out.

And the numbers over the last 15 years show they are getting out.

They are dropping their health care plans.  Fewer employers offer plans and those plans cover fewer employees. Continue reading ‘Health Care Reform – Scrap Employer Health Care’

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Health Care Reform and Employer Sponsored Health Insurance

February 20, 2010
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Wednesday, September 9th, President Barack Obama stood before the American people and a joint session of Congress and said:

If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, … nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.  (Applause.)  Let me repeat this:  Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

Someone will need to explain to me why this is a good thing.

The door may blocked

As the President was speaking these words, the 70 workers at SK Hand Tool Corp in Chicago, IL were without health insurance because their employer had made that decision for them.  It had unilaterally stopped paying for health insurance for its employees.

An inviting portal

An inviting portal

As the President was reassuring Americans that they could keep their health insurance, the employees of SK Hand Tools, represented by Teamsters Local 743, were starting the third week of a strike to keep their health insurance.

That strike would eventually last for ten weeks.

There is an overwhelming body of health policy research that supports the necessity of continuity of care to improve population health outcomes.  Yet for most Americans, employment is not a continuous engagement.

Why do we build a system that relies on continuity on another system that flourishes on discontinuity?

Continue reading ‘Health Care Reform and Employer Sponsored Health Insurance’

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Employer Mandates – Close the Loopholes

November 21, 2009
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Most people across the political spectrum agree that health care is a social good.  They agree that someone else’s health is in their interest.

People may not express it that way.  But as the adage goes- actions speak louder than words.Golden-Gate-Bridge-Fog-800

We support health care for old people through Medicare.  It was Republican President George W. Bush who partially filled the biggest gap in coverage for older people with legislation to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare.

We support health care coverage for poor people through federally supported state Medicaid programs.

We support the Children’s Health Insurance  Program (CHIP) that expands Medicaid programs to the children of the working poor.

We support health care for Native Americans through the Indian Health Service.

We just seem to have a problem with people who work.

It might seem logical that, since we clearly have recognized that health care is a social good, that we should require all employers to provide health insurance.  After all, we require employers to pay for workers’ compensation insurance, and unemployment insurance. Continue reading ‘Employer Mandates – Close the Loopholes’

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