One of my biggest problems with our existing health care system is that it relies on employers to provide coverage. By doing so, it complicates matters for the unemployed or for people whose employers can’t afford to offer such a benefit.
I feel it also has a profound impact on small businesses, and I like small businesses. Big businesses have huge advantages for providing health care to their employees, not only because they have more capital with which to provide it, but also because they can purchase it at a lower cost due to the quantities they’re buying. Their larger pool of employees also shields them from sharp spikes in premium costs due to individual employee sicknesses, pre-existing conditions, advanced age, and other health liabilities.
For me, the only complete solution for me is to remove health care from employment entirely. It’s actually one of the points McCain made in his campaign for president. He argued that the insurance policy needs to stay with the person, not with the job, and I agreed.
But that didn’t happen in this law, and it probably won’t because big business lobbies fought to keep health insurance in their control. I’m not sure why, but I can guess that it actually saves them money. A big business can provide employees not only with some money toward their premiums, but because of their purchasing power, also with a price on the policy that employees could not achieve individually. In other words, the insurance policy is more valuable than money for the employee and cheaper than money for the employer. But that only works if the company is big enough to command this purchasing power.
The new law by no means solves the problem for small businesses, but it does level the playing field a bit. For one, it provides a tax credit to small businesses who provide health care. The credit itself seems a bit limited, but it’s a nice gesture if nothing else. More importantly though, the law sets up exchanges that pool together many other small businesses allowing them to purchase health care with a similar economy of scale that big businesses enjoy.
I think this approach has promise. It’s uses the natural forces of free enterprise without imposing burdensome mandates. It doesn’t involve one person subsidizing another person’s coverage, and it doesn’t penalize anybody. I’m not sure if big businesses will like the increased competition, but I’m personally not worried about that.
Mark
Greg
Elijah
Pete
Michael
Josh
I agree with you here my brother. The connection between employment and health care is a disaster, and only contributes to the problem I spoke of in another post, that of obscuring the true costs of health care to the consumer. I did not know about the tax credit for small businesses, but that does seem like a good idea (though I would need to know more specifics before commenting in any informed manner). I do basically agree that the best bet for Republicans with this health care bill will be to find a few things they like (or can live with) and rally around extensive reform for the rest.
Well, considering that the current employer based system that we have was created by Government intervention in the markets by way of price and wage controls during world war II and later reinforced by tax breaks for such benefits offered by employers, I would think that we would view Government intervention as the problem and not the solution if indeed we don’t like the current employer based system. After all businesses would never have resorted to using incentives like health insurance and other benefits of that sort if they were allowed to set wages as they wished throughout our history and not encouraged by tax breaks and other government controls to do otherwise. This bill just expands broken systems like medicaid and employer based health insurance. It will only make things worse. My prediction is that costs go up, quality will go down, and the Government will intervene once more to fix the problem they created to fix the problem they created to fix the problem they created before that………..it is a vicious cycle that destroys freedom and the private sector along the way. Centralized planning doesnt work. I suppose we will prove that once again.