San Diego Trout
Accounts of Indians

Interview with Babe Ramos, a Native American of the Juaneno Band of the Acjachemen Nation, who was born in the Aguilar Adobe House (in San Juan Capistrano, CA where the Jack-in-the-Box is presently sited):

We asked Babe to talk about his life and to especially recall his or his brothers’ experiences around the steelhead in both the San Juan Creek and Trabuco Creek.

“In ’39 there was a big flood on the Trabuco, but lots of steelheads -they caught steelhead into the 1950’s. The last one I remember was in ’58.”

“I remember back oh, starting at 7 or 8 years old, with my brothers,Julian Junior, Aurelio, and Rudy, we wore uniforms to the Mission school. We weren’t supposed to – well Mother was strict about our uniforms, but one day after school before coming home we followed the creek, and jumped in – jumped in on a 30″ fish, a steelhead. We just had our pocket knife, and would jump in to them and bring them home. Mom, she saw us all wet and had that look – we were in for it, but when I took that big steelhead out from behind my back she showed a small, a little smile. They were very good to eat.”

“I guess (at age) 13 or 14 – I needed an operation right away, so my Dad took me to the closest hospital. Yes, my appendix. This was up in Anaheim, and we didn’t have money to pay for the doctor or hospital bill. Well that doctor told my Dad don’t worry about the hospital bill. Mom told me my end of the bargain was to take the doctor a steelhead once a week. Mom made sure to remind me to take that steelhead – which I did! That was in ’46.”

http://www.sandiegotrout.org/indians.html

Comment: What on earth is steelhead doing in a health policy message? Well,
first of all, steelhead fever is a life-long disorder that, unlike other diseases, dramatically improves quality of life. Any person reading this who has steelhead fever knows he or she has it and knows that the condition cannot be adequately explained to those people who don’t. It also seems to be a familial disorder since my sons have it as well.

That said, the plight of the steelhead in San Juan Capistrano exemplifies some of the dramatic changes resulting from ecological factors, especially in human ecology.

I arrived in San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente in July, 1966, the same month that Medicare and Medicaid provided coverage to many with health care
needs who could not otherwise afford to pay for it. The decimated steelhead
population could no longer serve as a source of payment for health care services, and other sources of barter were totally inadequate. Medicare
and Medicaid were a great advance forward in ensuring affordable access to
health care.

37 years later, what further advances have we made? Universality? Sustained
comprehensive coverage? Affordability? Accessibility? It seems that the dynamics of human ecology have not been very kind. We do have the resources. We do have the health policy knowledge on how to improve utilization of our resources. But we seem to lack solidarity and egalitarianism. Does it really have to remain that way?

Although a few steelhead have been spotted in Orange County in the past decade, sadly, human ecological factors will prevail. And what fate does human ecology hold for native Americans, for descendents of more recent European arrivals, and for all of the rest of us in the mix of the great American melting pot?

Maybe it’s time to turn to the sociologists to show us how to apply human ecology for the betterment of mankind, at least as it applies to health care. We can certainly continue to try to use what we have also learned from the economists, political scientists and others who have attempted to show us the light. There must be a solution. Steelhead bartering certainly won’t do it anymore.

Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 09:57:02 -0800
Does solidarity exist in the United States?

Los Angeles Times
February 23, 2004
State Cutbacks Harm Kids’ Health Program

Re “Budget Signals Narrowed Ambitions,” Feb. 18: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s finance director, Donna Arduin, suggests that expanding California’s Healthy Families insurance program for low-income children was indulging a policy whim. To the contrary, the state-federal Children’s Health Insurance Program is recognized widely as the one genuine health policy success of the last decade. Although the numbers of uninsured have continued to increase, they would be even greater without this program.

The political agenda on both the state and federal levels is to create nearly intolerable debt in place of modest taxation of significant private revenue sources. But the voters surely didn’t intend that more children be excluded from this essential health insurance program. Or did they?

Don McCanne MD
San Juan Capistrano

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-priests23.2feb23,0,7725486.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters

And…

Los Angeles Times
February 23, 2004
In health, Canada tops U.S.

An impressive array of data shows that Canadians live longer, healthier lives than we do. What’s more, they pay roughly half as much per capita as
we do…

Exactly why Canadians fare better is the subject of considerable academic
debate. Some policy experts say it’s Canada’s single-payer, universal health
coverage system. Some think it’s because our neighbors to the north use
fewer illegal drugs and shoot each other less often with guns…

Still others think Canadians are healthier because their medical system is tilted more toward primary care doctors and less toward specialists. And some believe it’s something more fundamental: a smaller gap between rich and poor.

Perhaps it’s all of the above. But there’s no arguing the basics. “By all measures, Canadians’ health is better,” says Dr. Barbara Starfield, a university distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

Gerald Kominski, associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, puts the Canadian comparison this way: “Are they richer? No. Are
they doing a better job at the lower end of the income distribution? For
lower-income individuals, they are doing a better job.”

“The summary of the evidence has to be that national health insurance has
improved the health of Canadians and is responsible for some of the longer
life expectancy,” says Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor at
Harvard Medical School and staunch advocate of a single-payer system.

Of course, some causes of death, such as homicide, wouldn’t be much affected
by having a single payer system.

“Other things might be differences in seat belt usage,” adds Robert Blendon,
a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of
Public Health. “We are also disproportionate consumers of illegal drugs… ”

The health of Americans would be better with universal healthcare, he says.

The bottom line is that Canada is doing something right, even if “the reasons are not totally understood,” says Kominski of UCLA.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-canada23feb23,1,6443349.column?coll=la-headlines-health

Comment: Although there are many differences between the United States and
Canada, there is absolutely no dispute that affordable access to comprehensive health care has improved health care outcomes in Canada. How have they been able to achieve so much more at a significantly lower cost? Based on the well documented, universal support of their medicare system, Canadians have demonstrated the importance of national solidarity.

Does solidarity exist in the United States? Some believe that it is only a matter of educating the public. If people really understood that we could raise the standards for lower-income individuals with relatively modest public support, then we would unite in solidarity.

But many states have had ballot measures that required voters to choose between taxes or the necessity to reduce public programs for the most vulnerable citizens. The results have revealed our dirty secret. Of all ndustrialized nations, the people of the United States are unique in lacking solidarity. Is it possible for us to change that?

The Progressive
February 2004
Gouging the Poor
By Barbara Ehrenreich

There’s been a lot of whining about health care recently: the shocking cost of insurance, the mounting reluctance of employers to share that cost, the challenge–should you be so lucky as to have insurance–of finding a doctor
your insurance company will deign to reimburse, and so forth. But let’s look
at the glass half full for a change. Despite the growing misfit between health care costs and personal incomes, it is not yet illegal to be sick.

Not quite yet, anyway, though the trend is clear…

… it’s not just the dodgier, second-rate hospitals that are relying on the police as collection agents. Yale-New Haven Hospital, for example, has obtained sixty-five arrest warrants for delinquent debtors in the last three years.

Of course, if you work for Yale-New Haven, it’s not your body that gets “attached.” On a recent visit to Yale hospital workers, I met Tawana Marks, a registrar at the hospital, who had the misfortune to also be admitted as a patient. Unsurprisingly, her hospital-supplied health insurance failed to cover her hospital-incurred bill, so Marks now has her paycheck garnished by her own employer–a condition of debt servitude reminiscent of early twentieth century company towns.

But for those of you who still imagine that illness and pain should elicit kindly responses from one’s fellow humans, I have one last half full observation: Our prisons do offer health care–grossly inadequate care to be sure–but at least it’s free, even for child molesters, ax murderers, and those miscreants who have the gall to be both sick and uninsured.

http://www.progressive.org/feb04/ehr0204.html

And…

The New York Times
February 20, 2004
Hospitals Can Provide Discounts to Uninsured and Needy Patients, Bush
Administration Says
By Robert Pear

The Bush administration encouraged hospitals on Thursday to give discounts
to uninsured patients and to financially needy Medicare beneficiaries. Such discounts are permissible under federal fraud and abuse laws, the government said, in a clarification requested by the hospital industry.

The new guidelines are a bit stricter for Medicare beneficiaries than for uninsured patients.

Consumer groups say the billing practices of some hospitals have been too aggressive. Medicare will pay hospitals for a share of their bad debt if they make “reasonable efforts” at collection, but the Bush administration said hospitals did not have to seize patients’ homes or other assets.

Comment: Routine discounting of fees for the uninsured and routine waiving of deductibles for the insured are usually prohibited by Medicare and by private insurance provider contracts. Third party payers rely on deductibles as disincentives, in order to reduce utilization of health services. Also, contracts are usually granted at rates below the usual fees charged. Routine discounts establish a lower usual fee than the list prices that then would be rarely collected. Thus Medicare and private insurance contracts have prohibited the routine waiving of list prices and deductibles.

The result was fully predictable. Aggressive collection practices have continued in order to demonstrate compliance with these requirements, whether it is for fear of reprisal or as an excuse to improve collection ratios. Personal bankruptcies because of medical bills have become commonplace. And non-payment of medical bills has even been criminalized by legal mechanisms such as “body attachment.”

It is a relief that the Bush administration does recognize the seriousness of the inability of many individuals to pay for essential medical care, even though they are hedging on the Medicare requirements. But rather than merely reducing penalties against providers for failing to aggressively pursue bill collection, wouldn’t it be better to find a way to provide everyone with comprehensive health insurance? Unfortunately, the current official position of the Bush administration is that it can’t be done.

We can show them how.

Los Angeles Times
February 18, 2004
Budget Signals Narrowed Ambitions
By Peter Nicholas and Virginia Ellis

For decades, California distinguished itself by pioneering easy and inexpensive access to college and championing broad medical coverage and a generous financial lifeline for the poorest families.

Now, driven by financial necessity, political leaders are redefining California’s government, positioning it as a follower instead of a leader.

Even as California’s finances were strained by the dot-com collapse, former
Gov. Gray Davis plowed resources into the subsidized health insurance program for poor children, Healthy Families (California’s SCHIP program). Enrollment rose from about 100,000 to 700,000.

Donna Arduin, Schwarzenegger’s finance director, questioned the sincerity of
recent officials who had approved such largess. With no steady source of money for the expansion, the state was not so much preserving a progressive legacy as indulging a policy whim, Arduin suggested.

“If the policymakers that preceded our being here had a long-term plan for those programs, the argument would be much stronger that these were the priorities of the state,” Arduin said in an interview. “I don’t see that long-term funds were planned and made available to keep these expansions going.”

In navigating the financial crisis – preserving essential services while wiping out the state’s deficit – California may yet prove to be a model for the rest of the country, she added.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget18feb18,1,1991364.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Comment: The only truly significant advance in health care reform in the past decade was the federal enactment of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Intensive enrollment efforts within the states were effective in providing health care coverage for low income, uninsured children. Although the total numbers of individuals without insurance continued to increase, the numbers would be even greater without this program.

There was bipartisan consensus that this program was worthy of tax support, and that the long term plan was to continue to fund it through tax revenues. A separate issue in California is that one-third of the members of either the Assembly or the Senate can prevent approval of the state budget. As we are seeing on the federal level as well, this partisan element is forcing us into nearly intolerable debt in order to prevent modest taxation of significant private revenue sources.

Donna Arduin, who slashed Gov. Jeb Bush’s budget, is now swinging the cleaver in California. She, with Gov. Schwarzenegger’s blessing, considers tax supported health insurance for low income children to be “indulging in a policy whim.” Is this really the change that Californians voted for? Excuse me; I’m nauseated.

Don

The Age
February 19, 2004
Private health insurers are on shaky ground
By Kenneth Davidson

Despite the billions of dollars the Howard Government has poured into private health insurance with no better purpose than to destroy Medicare as a universal system, the future of the private health insurance industry is by no means assured.

It is a myth that the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate has led to an expansion in private health insurance. Neither the penalty 1 per cent tax surcharge for those on incomes above $50,000, which was introduced in July
1997, nor the 30 per cent subsidy effective from January 1999 had a discernible impact in increasing the percentage of the population with private health cover.

This suggests that the 30 per cent subsidy to private health insurance was a
waste of money – a straight income transfer to the mainly rich who already
had private health insurance.

Based on surveys that show that Australians are prepared to pay higher taxes
if they are geared to extra services such as Medicare, (University of Canberra health economist Ian) McAuley observes: “Most people who arrange health insurance deductions from their pay packet probably don’t care that much whether the deductions are made to HCF, Medibank Private or the Australian Taxation Office.”

But then again they might, if they understood that 11.3 cents of every dollar raised by the private health funds is spent on administration, compared with 4.8 cents of every dollar spent by Medicare.

If the nexus between private health insurance and private medicine can be broken in the minds of the public, the private health insurance industry would have a much diminished future – despite its powerful friends in high places.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/18/1077072708014.html

Comment: Australians now are understanding that private insurance plans, which have been granted government subsidies, are a scheme to destroy their medicare as a universal system of funding health care.

In spite of our record-setting budget deficits, the Bush administration has just provided the private Medicare Advantage plans with a massive infusion of our taxpayer dollars, paying them much more per patient than they would cost in our traditional Medicare program. The Australian experience demonstrates what a terrible idea this is.

Let’s cut the gift of taxpayer funds to these private Medicare Advantage plans and, instead, spend the funds on a better Medicare program, beginning with a genuine prescription drug benefit for all of us.

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 10:23:14 -0800
Subject: qotd: The reference for today’s “quote” on Australia’s
private health plans

Australian Healthcare Association and
Australian Consumers’ Association
January 2004
Stress on public hospitals – why private insurance has made it worse A discussion paper by Ian McAuley, University of Canberra, for the Australian Consumers’ Association and the Australian Healthcare Association

Conclusion

Private health insurance is the wedge the Government has used to break the
universalism of Medicare. It has failed even its stated objective of shifting the burden of health service delivery from the public to the private sector.

Proposals to make private insurance work to provide equitable and efficient
outcomes are bound to fail. There is little policy sense in using a high cost financial intermediary to achieve what can be so much more easily achieved through taxation and Medicare – with their low collection costs, built-in progressivity, and capacity to control cost and resource allocation.

The confusion of the issues of public funding and public provision has given rise to a policy assumption that private hospitals must necessarily be funded through private insurance. This confusion serves vested interests, for it means that any proposal to reduce subsidies for private insurance can be framed as a proposal to do away with ‘the private health system’. The main purpose of this paper has been to expose that fallacy.

The report summary:
http://www.aha.asn.au/publications/publication_details.asp?pid=86

The full report:
http://www.aha.asn.au/documents/publications/86/040216%20Private%20hospitals%20private%20insurance%20(McAuley).pdf

Economic Report of the President
and
The Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisors
February 2004

Chapter 10
Health Care and Insurance

This chapter discusses the roles of innovation, insurance, and reform in the health care market. The key points in this chapter are: U.S. markets provide incentives to develop innovative health care products and services that benefit both Americans and the global community.

. Over reliance on health insurance as a payment mechanism leads to an inefficient use of resources in providing and utilizing health care.

. Reforms should provide consumers and health care providers with more flexibility and information.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/index.html

And…

The New York Times
February 17, 2004
The Health of Nations
By Paul Krugman

The Economic Report of the President, released last week, has drawn criticism on several fronts. Let me open a new one: the report’s discussion of health care, which shows a remarkable indifference to the concerns of ordinary Americans…

When I saw that the president’s economic report devoted a whole chapter to
health care, I assumed that it would make some attempt to address these public concerns.

Instead, the report pooh-poohs the problem. Although more than 40 million
people lack health insurance, this doesn’t matter too much because “the uninsured are a diverse and perpetually changing group.” This is good news? At any given time about one in seven Americans is uninsured, which is bad enough. Because the uninsured are a “perpetually changing group,” however, a much larger fraction of the population suffers periodic, terrifying spells of being uninsured, and an even larger fraction lives with the fear of losing insurance if anything goes wrong at work or at home.

The report also seems to have missed the point of health insurance. It argues that it would be a good thing if insurance companies had more information about the health prospects of clients so “policies could be tailored to different types and priced accordingly.”

Having brushed off the plight of those who, for economic or health reasons, cannot get insurance, the report turns to a criticism of health insurance in general, which it blames for excessive health care spending.

Is this really the crucial issue? It’s true that the U.S. spends far more on health care than any other country, but this wouldn’t be a bad thing if the spending got results. The real question is why, despite all that spending, many Americans aren’t assured of the health care they need, and American life expectancy is near the bottom for advanced countries.

Where is the money going? A lot of it goes to overhead. The result is that American health care, which at its best is the best in the world, offers much of the population a worst-of-all-worlds combination of insecurity and high costs. And that combination is getting worse:insurance premiums are rising, and companies are becoming increasingly unwilling to offer insurance to their employees.

What would an answer to the growing health care crisis look like? It would surely involve extending coverage to those now uninsured. To keep costs down, it would crack down both on drug prices and on administrative costs. And it might well cut private insurance companies out of the loop for some, if not all, coverage.

But the administration can’t offer such an answer, both because of its ideological blinders and because of its special interest ties. The Economic Report of the President has only negative things to say about efforts to hold down drug prices. It talks at length about insurance reform, but it mainly complains that we rely too much on insurance; it says nothing about either expanding coverage or reducing insurance-company overhead. Its main concrete policy suggestion is a plan for tax-deductible health savings accounts, which would be worth little or nothing to a vast majority of the uninsured.

Comment: Perhaps the easiest way to attack the dual problem of high health care costs with a grossly inadequate system of insurance is to condemn our over reliance on insurance. That takes care of the healthy and wealthy. But what do we do about those with health care needs?

Perhaps the easiest solution is really in the opposite direction – provide comprehensive coverage for everyone.

Two nearly identical transcripts of the debate panel, “Border wars,” featuring Milton Friedman, Gil Gutknecht, Sally Pipes and Don McCanne are now available on the Internet. One is available on the website of Pacific Research Institute, which hosted the event. The other is on the website of Tech Central Station, “Where Free Markets Meet Technology,” which is hosted by James K. Glassman who also served as moderator of this panel debate.

An excerpt from the transcript posted at Pacific Research Institute:

Glassman: This is the last question from the floor and I’m going to ask it
to Dr. McCanne first. Then I’d like to hear Congressman Gutknecht’s comments, and we’ll end with Dr. Friedman’s comments. The question is this: Top-down, command and control stifles innovation, writes someone sitting in front of me. I think that’s a pretty good proposition. How does Dr. McCanne expect innovation to occur?

McCanne: Well, just not top-down control, but funding. You know, price controls and budgeting and so forth. And that really is an important issue in innovation. But if we look at the history in technological innovation, probably two of the very greatest advances in the last half century have been MRI scans and CT scans. Each of those appropriately received the Nobel Prize for those developments. Where were they developed? Well, the Nobel Prize was shared with a British scientist. England has amongst the lowest rate of funding of their health care system, but that did not stop the technological innovation that occurred in the CT scanning and MRIs, and some of the other research that has taken place.

Glassman: Let me just refine this question a little bit and hear from the congressman, and then finally from Dr. Friedman. Innovation is something I spend a lot of my time thinking about. And it’s quite clear that our system, which is relatively free in these areas despite problems with the FDA, does promote innovation in drugs. I think that would be very hard to argue against. By disrupting that system in the way that you propose, many people think you would stifle that kind of innovation. Where is this innovation going to come from if it’s not from drug companies wanting to make decent profits on developing new drugs?

McCanne: There’s no way the drug industry is going to walk away from $1.6
trillion, period.

Gutknecht: Well, first of all I want to pierce this myth that they don’t do any research in Europe with the system that they have. If you look at the major pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo is a British company. Bayer is a German company…

The Pacific Research Institute transcript:
http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/rel/2004/ma04-01-27/transcript2.pdf

For the video:
http://www.pacificresearch.org/borderwarsdebate_video.html

For the audio:
http://www.pacificresearch.org/borderwarsdebate_audio.html

And an excerpt from the same portion of the transcript as it was posted at
Tech Central Station (This is essentially the same except for the absence of
my comment about the drug industry not walking away from $1.6 trillion):

Glassman: Let me just add, this is the last question from the floor, I’m
going to ask it to Dr. McCan first. I’d like to hear Congressman Gutknecht’s
comments, and then we’ll end with Dr. Friedman’s comments. The question
is this: Top-down, command and control stifles innovation writes someone
sitting in front of me. I think that’s a pretty good proposition. How
does Dr. McCan expect innovation to occur?

Dr. McCan: Well, just not top-down control, but funding. You know,
price controls and budgeting and so forth. And that really is an important
issue in innovation. But if we look at the history in technological
innovation, probably two of the very greatest advances in the last half century have been MRI scans and CT scans. Each of those appropriately received the Nobel Prize for those developments. Where were they developed? Well, the
Nobel Prize was shared with a British scientist. England has amongst the
lowest rate of funding of their health care system, but that did not stop the
technological innovation that occurred in the CT scanning and MRIs, and
some of the other research that has taken place.

Glassman: Let me just refine this question a little bit and hear from the
congressman, and then finally from Dr. Friedman. Innovation is kind of what
I spend a lot of my time thinking about. And it’s quite clear that our system, which is relatively free in these areas despite problems with the FDA, does promote innovation in drugs. I mean I think that would be very hard to argue against. Disrupting that system in the way that you propose, many people think would stifle that kind of innovation. Where is this innovation going to come from if it’s not from drug companies wanting to make decent profits on developing new drugs?

Rep Gutknecht: Well, first of all I want to pierce this myth that they
don’t do any research in Europe with the system that they have. If you look
at the major pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo is a British company. Bayer, as
you mentioned, we call it Bayer, is a German company…

The Tech Central Station transcript:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204D.html

Comment: James Glassman did not allow opening statements, and he controlled
all questions. (But he did allow himself an opening statement, and Sally
Pipes added her own written statement to the beginning of the PRI transcript.)

On the video you will see that Glassman did grant me permission to make the
very brief comment about the $1.6 trillion. We can speculate as to why he
left it out of his version of the transcript. But it does seem to be a powerful argument against his point that not enough funds would be available
to provide the profits that would encourage innovation in new products.

Regardless, this is a time for open and honest discussion of the serious
problems that plague our health care system. We need to lay ideology aside
and forthrightly address the real issues. Suppressing debate and striking
out responses not to one’s liking does not add to this process.

Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2004
Costco Sees Value in Higher Pay
By James Flanigan

Much of corporate America is driven today by the belief that to be competitive, companies must cut their employees’ wages and benefits.

Nowhere is this creed held more devoutly than among the supermarket chains that are enduring a strike and have locked out their workers in Southern and Central California. A new kind of labor agreement that cuts pay and sharply slashes employer contributions to health benefits is imperative, declares Steven Burd, chief executive of Safeway Inc., “if we’re going to stay in business.”

Jim Sinegal sees things much differently. The chief executive of Costco Wholesale Corp., a warehouse club retailer with 430 stores, likes to boast of his company’s relatively high pay and benefits for its 92,000 employees.

… Costco – where a full-time clerk or warehouse worker earns more than $41,000 annually after four years, compared with $37,232 at the upermarkets…

Unlike the supermarket workers, Costco employees have always paid a portion
of their health insurance. The co-payment is now 4.5%, or $500 to $1,000 a year. That will rise to 8% in the next four years, to keep up with soaring insurance costs.

But the benefit package that Costco employees get in return is particularly rich. The company chips in $12,000 to $19,000 per employee (depending on whether they are full- or part-time). In the end, Costco’s contribution is at least a third higher than that made by supermarket employers to their workers’ health benefit plan.

If Costco has a weak spot, it is on the bottom line. The company earns about 1.7 cents for each dollar of sales, compared with 2.5 cents or more for the supermarket chains and 3.5 cents for Wal-Mart.

Wall Street contends that one reason for this shoddy showing is Costco’s generosity to its employees. Above all, as Costco executives have watched the turmoil at the grocery chains, they have been reminded about all that they are doing right.

“I don’t see what’s wrong,” Sinegal says, “with an employee earning enough to be able to buy a house or having a health plan for the family.”

http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-fi-flan15feb15,1,7018352.column?coll=la-headlines-business-careers

Comment: The reality? In this instance, a conscientious employer, who believes that employees should be adequately covered for comprehensive health care benefits, is paying $19,000 for a $41,000 employee, and that doesn’t even include the employee’s contribution. This amounts to about one-third of compensation being received as health benefits (minus retirement benefits). Obviously, at that rate, an employer cannot remain competitive with other businesses that slash health care benefits.

Relinquishment of adequate profits cannot be considered a realistic option for funding employee health care. Reduction of employee compensation to below subsistence levels is not satisfactory either. Employer sponsored coverage inevitably is reflected in higher consumer prices. Inequitable provision of employee health benefits places the conscientious employer at an unfair competitive disadvantage with business owners who reduce prices by depriving employees of adequate compensation packages.

In 2004, we’re already spending $1.79 trillion or $6167 per person on health care. Placed in a single, universal risk pool that would amount to more than
enough to fund a comprehensive benefit package for everyone. Then,instead
of relying on the diminishing supply of conscientious employers and the diminishing clout of union negotiators, we should rely on sound tax policy to establish an equitable method of funding our universal risk pool.

If we fail to change to an equitable system of funding health care, we will force concerned employers into an untenable position. In order to survive in a competitive market, they will have to trim their contributions to the health plans. Then what will we have? Unaffordable care for those who really do need it.

But the rest of us will be fine… as long as we stay healthy.