Top firms’ plan for uninsured stumbles
By Bruce Japsen
Chicago Tribune
February 18, 2006
A landmark health-care plan offering benefits to millions of uninsured workers and initially sponsored by more than 50 blue-chip companies has failed to gain traction in the nearly two years since its lofty goals were announced.
In the National Health Access plan, three insurers–Cigna Corp., Humana Inc. and UnitedHealth Group–agreed to offer a range of benefits and discounts on medical care and prescription drugs.
Fewer than 9,000 workers and their dependents have enrolled in the National Health Access program since the plan got off the ground in the fall, which is far short of expectations, said officials connected with the plan.
Officials say several issues, notably the inability to offer a plan that’s affordable for most employees in the group, have been the biggest stumbling blocks.
“For this group, it’s a challenge to find almost any level of affordable coverage to give them what they are looking for,” said Marisa Milton, associate general counsel at the HR Policy Association, a Washington-based lobbying group composed of human resource executives. HR Policy Association helped create the program, which is administered in part by Hewitt Associates, a Lincolnshire-based employee benefits and human resources consultancy.
Initially the plan’s backers, which include Hoffman Estates-based Sears Holdings Corp. and Oak Brook-based McDonald’s Corp., were lauded for trying to find an innovative, private-sector initiative to help fix one of the country’s most expensive problems: providing affordable health coverage for more than 45 million uninsured Americans.
The member companies believed that if they could pool enough of their workers together they could entice health insurance companies into a bidding war to handle the business, thus keeping costs lower.
“There are valuable lessons to learn from this,” Milton said.
Comment: By Don McCanne, M.D.
A landmark health plan sponsored by more than fifty blue-chip companies manages to insure fewer than 9,000 workers nationally. What a landmark! Marisa Milton from the HR Policy Association says that there are valuable lessons to learn from this, but you can imagine what their perceptions of the lessons are.
There is one single lesson that stands out above all others. Many of the largest corporations in the nation and some of the largest insurers, working with the most influential human resources organizations, put this plan together and announced it with the fanfare of a full trumpet chorus. As we now listen to the distant, somber, solo trumpet playing taps, we realize that the best that the private sector has to offer is totally incapable of bringing us effective health care reform.
Who do we see heading back to the negotiation tables? The major corporations? The insurers? The human resource industry? Yes, yes and yes.
Where are the providers? The few that do show up are there with their very weak, me-first advocacies.
Where are the politicians? Too many of them are hiding behind the shredded curtains of political feasibility (but, fortunately, not all).
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the fact that potentially the most powerful voice of all is not showing up: those of us who are relatively healthy and do not feel especially threatened by medical debt.
Let’s see, what is the prevailing rhetoric? I’ve taken good care of my health, and I’m insured against potential catastrophic losses. Everyone else should meet their own individual responsibilities by doing the same. Why should I have to pay for others who don’t take care of their own health?
Egalitarianism? Isn’t that a French word? Well, we’re certainly not French. We’re Americans.
Excuse me. I’m going bowling now… alone, thank you.