Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance Fear vs. Other Fears, Pt.2 -- Threats

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The picture doesn’t look much better for our nation’s employers. A health insurance/care-reform coalition called Better Health Care Together have issued a distressing report called “Why American Businesses Urgently Need Health Care Reform”. In it they stress "if trends continue, health benefit costs will exceed profits in Fortune 500 companies in 2008." Translated, this means that spiraling costs of health insurance/care are expected to accelerate and necessitate the business trend to drop employee health insurance plans, if they cause the businesses to operate at a loss. This coalition includes big players, such as General Mills, Wal-Mart and Intel. The federal government is doing about as bad. Without reform, government finances, themselves, risk bankruptcy. It’s predicted that, by the year 2050, healthcare spending could reach as much as 37% of our GDP. That’s 17% more than entire federal government’s current spending. The US Comptroller General cautions that "we have been diagnosed with fiscal cancer, and we need to start treating it."

So the big conundrum is limiting heath insurance/care costs in a way that they can survive the legislative process. It has been suggested that a single-payer system would increase efficiencies, but the counter is always that this could over-control costs, thereby limiting health care. From the political standpoint, the single-payer healthcare system would mean a major restructure of our economy. It could also result in the elimination of major industries and wipe out tens of thousands of jobs. This would be political suicide. Even John McCain’s radical health insurance restructure has found little favor with Democrats or moderate Republicans or even voters.

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