Healthcare
Why healthcare and specifically, a national single payer system, is not a bigger political issue is a mystery to me. Especially when you get news like this:
Workers won't find much comfort in the smallest increase in health insurance premiums since 1999. The 7.7 percent increase this year was still more than twice the rate of inflation.
[Snip]
Altman said the rising gap between premium growth and wages is particularly startling when one takes a longer look back. Since 2000, health insurance premiums have gone up 78 percent; wages 20 percent.
"Yes, the rate of increase is down, but I don't think anybody is celebrating," Altman said of this year's numbers.
America’s healthcare system is becoming more and more unaffordable with each passing day. The employer provided insurance model is clearly unsustainable. It makes American business less competitive compared to other companies abroad because they do not have this massive expense on their balance sheet. Hence, American firms are being forced to curtail or even drop insurance benefits for employees. Employees without insurance are sicker and hence less productive than their insured counterparts. So companies are left with two bad choices: provide heinously expensive coverage that kills the bottom line or deal with lost productivity from employees in poor health.
It seems to me that at some point in the near future, we are going to see a big push, most likely from Big Bidness, to offload healthcare costs to the state or federal government. I may be completely wrong here but I think the day of reckoning for our healthcare system is coming. Why aren’t there more politicians, think tanks, etc. talking about this?
posted by joestrummerlives at 1:16 PM
2 Comments:
we are going to see a big push, most likely from Big Bidness, to offload healthcare costs to the state or federal government.
You already are.
Employer sponsored health care coverage will soon be a part of the past, because when the model was developed people 1) lived to be 60 something at most; and 2) didn't have the option of MRIs, CAT scans, statins, and other such expensive treatments.
Now people live to their 80s and 90s and when they become ill there are a host of extremely expensive things that can be done to cure it. More treatments*more years=$$$$, that's a basic fact
Result- most employers (small businesses and those that employ less skilled workers) can't afford it or don't want to bother because health insurance is incredibly expensive. By not offering insurance, the employer basically forces the employee to purchase their own insurance (way way too expensive and most do not) or use public insurance if they qualify. Which at least their children will and women when pregnant, everything else is a gamble unless you are truly in poverty.
And the sad thing is, nobody is really benefitting from this save one very powerful and completely ruthless industry. Doctors are actually paid less to provide care through cost saving models that most big purchasers (including the government) have caught on to, and fewer people have coverage which results in costs for their care being passed on to the people that do, more health care facilities are closing and/or refusing to take public insurance patients because the pay isn't enough to keep their doors open.
The only part of the industry that hasn't been caught up with this new spartanism- pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. They are still excessively profitable and other than Hatch-Waxman in the 1980's and a small number of ammendments to it that have closed some of the more obvious loopholes, they will remain so because they are such a powerful lobby. The industry influences the behavior of the rest of the system through 1) keeping generic versions of costly drugs off the market as long as possible; 2) actively lobbying against any federal intervention that would include price controls for new drugs; 3) supporting and subsidizing all kinds of conferences and medical conventions to peddle their brand of drug; 4) advertising directly to the consumers about their brand drug (so you go to the doctor and ask for "the little purple pill" for example; 5) undisclosed sponsoring of drug evaluation studies that go in medical journals (and quashing findings that don't support their drug over another drug); and 6) influencing doctor's behavior through direct sales and tracking their prescribing behavior. So instead of you getting a generic antacid for example, you get the pricey name brand one that costs 3 times as much but works the same.
I'm not saying the reigning in the industry would solve the entire problem, but it sure would help.
Here is an article you should read.
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/159/inside_information/
10:39 AM
ps. my entire job is talking about this :)
12:14 PM
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