Posted on 10/17/2007 10:34:27 PM PDT by Lorianne
"The U.S. employer-based health-insurance system is failing," declares a new report by the Committee for Economic Development (CED). The CED is a Washington, D.C.-based policy think tank comprised of business and education leaders. And it is right: Employer-based health-insurance is indeed failing.
Between 2000 and 2007, the percentage of firms offering health insurance benefits fell from 69 percent to 60 percent. The percentage of people under age 65 with employer provided insurance dropped by 68 to 63 percent. In absolute numbers, those covered by job-based insurance fell from 179.4 million to 177.2 million.
Employers are jettisoning health insurance because costs are out of control. Since 2001, premiums for family coverage have increased 78 percent, while wages have gone up 19 percent and inflation is up 17 percent. The consequence is that health insurance is the number one domestic policy issue in the 2008 presidential race.
So what is the CED's prescription for our ailing health insurance system? The report promisingly begins by recommending the creation of "a system of market-based universal health insurance." In order to achieve this, the CED would make health insurance mandatory for every American.
The CED proposal envisions the creation of independent regional exchanges that would act as a single point of entry for each individual to choose among competing private health plans. The exchanges would set minimum benefit plans. The exchanges would also cut through the thickets of state health insurance regulations that add substantially to the costs of insurance. Individuals could purchase insurance above and beyond the minimum benefit plans with after tax dollars.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
It SOUNDS good..........
That's as far as I need to read.
I thought the same thing. But if you read on you’ll see what he’s getting at.
Well, following the mandatory car insurance laws, if you don’t have car insurance - you lose your privilege to drive.
If you don’t have Health insurance - You lose your privilege to ...?
bump
And Reason is supposed to be a “libertarian” site?
All I see are those state rules becoming mandatory in all regions. Every insurer will have to provide for every problem imaginable. They won’t be able to say our plan won’t cover abortion or drug addiction so you can have a lower rate, because the states will require that everything be covered. That means that the cost of health care will increase for everyone because the cost to insure will be going up to cover all these things.
I keep hearing that the system is broken. But it seems to work better than any other system in the world. If there is a better system working somewhere else, let’s study it. If a better system does not exist elsewhere, why keep trying to mess with this one?
if you don’t have mandatory catastrophic insurance, the uninsured would still get care and that ends up increasing the cost for the whole system.
As for non-catastrophic, there is no real need for everyone to have this insurance.
Why is it that the word “mandatory” has to creep into every political solution to every problem faced by society?
By what standards are you judging it to be better than all other healthcare systems?
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29303.html
According to a June 2003 report from the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. loses between $65 billion and $130 billion annually as a result of poor health and early death due to lack of insurance. The uninsured impose costs on the rest of us, too: A 2003 Kaiser Commission report to the Urban Institute estimated that uninsured Americans each year receive about $34.5 billion in uncompensated health care while paying $26.4 billion out of their own pockets.
The ability to choose to pay for the insurance that more closely fits your needs. The ability to be seen by a health care provider without having to wait months.
What is your complaint with the system?
Right now the system is a very expensive mish-mash of private and gubmint plans.
Beyond that, some form of very basic universal healthcare is inevitable at this point. We’re the last industrialized country not to have it. Business wants it, the insurance companies want it and the folks that are un-insured or paying a ton out of pocket for insurance want it.
no, but health care will be more expensive
When people have to write checks they actually feel the pain, and down come the costs for everybody.
Next, lets get employers out of the income-tax collection business....
that’s right and the last thing we need is government to run it.
It will probably be administered by private firms.
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