The Washington Post
September 22, 2001
“Federal Insurance to Rise 13.3%” by Stephen Barr
“Health insurance premiums for federal employees and retirees will rise an average 13.3 percent next year, the Bush administration said yesterday. The 2002 rates are nearly 50 percent higher than what government workers paid in 1998.”
“The federal program, which provides health insurance coverage to about 9 million government workers, retirees and family members worldwide and more than 800,000 people in the Washington area, often serves as a bellwether for premium increases in the private sector.”
“The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program is the largest employer-sponsored program in the nation, annually providing more than $24 billion in health care benefits. Employees may choose from about 180 health plan options and, depending on the plan, the government usually pays from 70 percent to 75 percent of the total premium.”
Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union:
“Clearly, something is wrong when a health care plan of this size fails to use its marketing clout to help keep premiums in line.”
Comment: Something’s wrong? The largest health benefit program in the nation, with 180 competing health plan options for nine million individuals, has not been effective in using market competition to control costs? Hasn’t this been an adequate test of the theory of containing costs by having health plans compete in the marketplace? How much more testing of this failed premise are we going to tolerate? We’ve had enough. It is time to seriously consider a proven method of cost containment, which, much more importantly, has the greater advantage of introducing equity to our health care system: a publicly-administered program of universal health insurance.