Fwd: Health Care on a Wing and a Prayer

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

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From: CPE <programs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Econ-Atrocity: Health Care on a Wing and a Prayer
By Jonathan Teller-Elsberg
August 9, 2006

Millions of employed Americans who are offered health insurance
through their jobs are turning down the benefit because of high costs.
This has been a tragic fact for many years, but the situation is only
getting worse.

According to a recent report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
the number of workers who declined to accept health insurance when it
was offered by their employer increased by three million between 1998
and 2003. All told, some 12 million workers eligible for work-based
health insurance turned it down in 2003.

Over the years of the study, the average annual cost to the worker to
accept employer-supplied insurance went up by over $1,000, a 42% jump.
It hardly needs mentioning that average wages have not kept pace.

Rising costs are not necessarily the reason that all of those 12
million workers declined the offered coverage—some workers turn down
the health insurance from their own job because they are better off
being covered as part of a family member's work-based insurance.

Still, cost is the reason that most uninsured people lack coverage.
Insurance costs have been rising for workers and employers alike. In
both 1998 and 2003, employers who offered health insurance to their
workers covered an average of 82% of the premiums. This means that
employers also faced a 42% increase in their costs of providing health
benefits. A predictable result is that more and more employers decide
not to offer health insurance even as an option.

Altogether, 34% of full-time workers in private industry were not
covered by employer-provided health insurance in 2004. Even those
lucky enough to have insurance as an option, and lucky enough to be
able to afford their share of the premium, have faced rising
healthcare costs that take a toll. Rising deductibles, capped
coverage, and other aspects of miserly insurance plans leave working
people facing terrible financial risks. In 2001, half of Americans
filing for personal bankruptcy cited medical expenses as helping to
push them over the line. Of those, three quarters had health insurance
when their illness or injury struck.

Clearly, the health care system in America is out of whack. When
millions of workers can't afford coverage, and many who have coverage
are still driven to bankruptcy because their insurance is so stingy,
we need real alternatives.

The simplest solution is a national health plan that provides
universal coverage. From Canada to New Zealand, all the other
economically advanced countries of the world offer examples of health
care systems that care for peoples' health instead of insurance and
pharmaceutical corporation profits.

Until citizen pressure drags such a solution out of a resistant
government, people can band together to create insurance alternatives.
A leader in this type of grassroots movement is the Ithaca Health
Alliance health care co-op, which provides a wide range of services
for only $100 per year.

Sources and resources:

* Washington Post, "FINDINGS: More Are Opting Out of Employers' Insurance,"
5/5/06, p. A9,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401708.html.

* Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, "Report Shows Decline in Employees
Accepting Health Insurance, Rising Insurance Premiums Across Nation,"
5/4/06, http://www.rwjf.org/newsroom/newsreleasesdetail.jsp?id=10408.

* Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, Nancy Folbre, and James Heintz, Field Guide
to the U.S. Economy (Revised and Expanded), pp. 27 and 122, New York:
The New Press, 2006.

* Ithaca Health Alliance, www.ithacahealth.org.

* Physicians for a National Health Plan, www.pnhp.org.

(c) 2006 Center for Popular Economics

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--
Jim Devine / "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to
be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But
in economics, it's the exact opposite." --- Paul Dirac [edited]