Back in the good ole days companies searched desparately for ways to compensate people without increasing their salaries.
Enter the corporate healthcare premium. With their large group purchasing power, they could insure their workers at far less cost than to give them all a raise.
So dental and medical became the byword for a good job. (The pay ain't so great, but at least I have dental and medical)
Now, after the inevitable has occurred and costs balloon in all directions, they seek a new way to reduce or eliminate them.
Welcome to the wonderful world of ersatz prosperity.
Best regards,
“Back in the good ole days companies searched desparately for ways to compensate people without increasing their salaries.”
The current system of employer sponsored medical plans grew out of a combination of World War II wage/price controls and a provision of the tax code that allowed employers to deduct the cost of medical/dental benefits as a business expense, while exempting that benefit from the wage control laws. Thus adding “free medical benefits” became a legal way to compete for employees by increasing indirect compensation.
After the war, the tax benefit remained, but it has now become less attractive because it hides the cost of medical care, which has been spiking as the Medicare/Medicaid cost shifting to private insurers and individuals has driven up the sticker prices for private purchasers of medical services. Thus, unless you are enrolled in some medical group plan that is far enough up the “food chain” created by the tax code and govt program cost shifting, and group plan negotiating power with larger medical service providers, the costs end up getting shifted to you.
It is encouraging that some physicians are opting out of this and setting up practices that do not take government-paid patients or private group plan discounts and, with less “cost shifting” in place, charge their private patients less than would be necessary for a clinic that had the various cost-shifting vampires sucking away its revenues.
However, any of the “universal health care” schemes will likely make such practices illegal. The “public” will then get everything it deserves in the way of mandated medical care services, with the same problems as would be faced in obtaining other services extracted from an enslaved class.