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Health insurers are boosting fees
. The NY Times reports that small firms are facing the steepest hikes in insurance premiums they've faced in years. They're rising by an average of 15 percent, double last year's increase, to make annual premium increases per employee $55-hundred.
Part of this is due to higher medical costs, part is due because small business has little negotiating clout, but the biggest factor, says the Times, is that Wall Street is putting pressure on health insurance firms to generate more profits.
Anyone who thinks we've seen a lot of anger over health care, just wait, because it's in this story where the dam is going to burst.
First of all, let's stop with the socialism nonsense. When it comes to health care, most Americans are socialists and they don't even know it, including the ones who oppose government-provided health care because they think it's socialism. I've got news for you: You're probably a socialist.
Most Americans don't get their own health insurance; they get it through someone else. Six in 10 Americans get health care coverage through their employer. If that's you, you're a socialist. If you don't want socialism, opt out of your company's health insurance and go buy your own on your own. Good luck, comrade.
So 60 percent of us get our health care coverage from our employer. Small business employs some 70-80 million workers and one third of the voting population.
How can small business continue to afford providing their workers with health care coverage with figures like those quoted above? No one who has followed the health care debate for any length of time is shocked by those rising rates. Small business owners have seen their group plans rising 20 percent last year, 27 percent this year. They can't sustain that kind of cost and remain competitive, let alone open.
So how can small business continue to afford providing their workers with health care coverage? The answer is, they can't, and they're not.
In 1997, 58 percent offered health insurance; 10 years later, only 41 percent offered it. And yet, the majority of small businesses surveyed by NSBA and the SBA say the benefit most valuable to prospective employees is health insurance.
This doesn't even account for the people who lost their health care coverage when they lost their job, and I heard a few people lost their jobs in the past year or so. Based on data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 2.5 million workers have lost the health coverage their jobs provided since the start of the recession in December of 2007. Approximately, 1.5 million of these losses have occurred in the first half of this year. More than 320,000 Americans lost their employer-provided health insurance in March alone. That amounts to approximately 10,680 workers a day.
And call me crazy but when firms start rehiring again (as they now say they plan to do), I'm guessing some of them won't be providing health care benefits any more. I've not seen the figures but surely many who were laid off during the recession were because they were getting benefits. That's why more people were working more hours doing more jobs. Even with a pay increase, it's cheaper to pay one person to do three jobs than to pay three people less money --you still have to provide benefits.
The health care debate has touched on everything from death panels to true government intervention to exasperation over the Cadillac plans that cover our elected officials, to political opponents of reform who have no answer if they win the debate.
But just wait. Give it 10 years. The NY Times story will continue to occur. More and more businesses will eliminate their health coverage. More and more middle class Americans will find themselves complaining that their company eliminated their benefits, that they're no longer socialists, and that they actually have to try and get coverage on their own, which many will find too expensive to afford.
See, we don't think much about our health care coverage as long as we have it. Doctor visits are routine. You schedule an exam or a procedure, you're in and out with insurance covering most of it. Wait till this matter hits you personally. You'll think about health care a lot more when you don't have it, and before long, more Americans won't have it than will.
That's when you'll see the public demand health care reform. Goodness, they might even say something like a public option isn't good enough.
You think Americans were angry at those town hall meetings? You ain't seen nuthin' yet.
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