A look at how the American health care system is currently set up and who is really paying the soaring costs associated with the current heatlh care crisis.
For decades, the common assumption was that if you had a good job and worked for a big company, you had adequate health insurance, even into retirement. According to an article that appeared in the March 5, 2008, edition of the Journal of American Medicine, that assumption is no longer true.
According to writers Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., and Victor R. Fuchs, Ph.D., workers and households pay for health insurance through lower wages and higher prices.
In other words, to offset the rising costs of health care, employers that offer an insurance plan to their employees label the insurance coverage part of the whole compensation package, thereby justifying a lower wage. So who’s really paying the price of escalating health care costs? The average, working American with the good job at a big company. Not the employer.
In a Consumer Expenditure Survey, it was found that “the amount of earnings a worker must give up for gaining health insurance is roughly equal to the amount an employer must pay for such coverage.”
And is the government taking care of the uninsured and underinsured? No. Are hospitals and health care providers absorbing the costs? Again, sadly no. Then who is?
The average American worker with the good job at a big company.
According to the JAMA article, the government has no source of funds other than taxes or borrowing to pay for health care. And, as we all know, the government is overextended on its credit, so guess where the government is getting the money to cover the costs accrued by the underinsured and uninsured? Ultimately through taxes.
But it gets worse. When an uninsured or underinsured patient racks up a big bill from emergency room care or a long-term hospital stay, it drives premiums skyward for the next patient—the one with insurance. Health care providers and hospitals must recoup their losses, so they raise prices on procedures. Patient A undergoing gall bladder surgery may pay $1,500 for the procedure, while Patient B may go in for the same procedure and pay $2,500. Since there is no standard regulation and no transparency in the system, they get away with it.
And, as anyone who has a good job with a big company and adequate health insurance who has dealt with co-payments over the last 10 to 15 years can attest, they have increased, too. In Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, Sen. Tom Daschle points out that more middle class families making $50,000 or more are joining the ranks of the uninsured due to increasing premiums, co-payments and deductibles due to the fact that since 2000, the cost of premiums for employer-based plans has increased five times the wage rate .
According to the writers of the JAMA article, and others entering the national debate on the American health care crisis such as Sen. Tom Dashle and those running for president, it is critical for Americans to become involved in the process.
Is it time for a change? And in what direction should that change head?
