Skip to main content

Health "benefits"?: Oh well...

We meet them all the time:  people trapped in their job, in order to keep their health benefits.  

We need a study on the negative impact on entrepreneurship and the economy from people health-handcuffed to their current jobs.  From my limited anecdoctal evidence, the costs are astronomical.  

Two-income families have made the labor market much more geographically immobile, and now health insurance is exacerbating the job-jail.

Modern Healthcare just summarized results of a new Peterson-Kaiser study on employer health insurance and the actual cost to employee families, of the combination of employee share of premiums plus employee out-of-pocket health costs. Employers keep shifting more and more health costs to employees.

The only good news is that employers are still paying a (fast-shrinking) % of premiums--so health costs are still cheaper than being self-employed.  [Also, if we end up back in the uncovered pre-existing conditions bad-old-days again, expensive employer health insurance still looks better than no insurance at all.]

We live in a democracy, with a lot of working-class families barely getting by.  As we exceed 10% of personal income going to health costs for an ever-larger % of families, the political pressure for "Medicare-for-All" will increase.  If the GOP doesn't come up with a real (i.e., non-fake) credible universal health coverage alternative, I continue to predict single-payer in the 2021-2033 timeframe.

And real/non-fake means: no small federal block grants to states for a fig-leaf pre-existing conditions "pool".  People may not have vision care anymore, but they can increasingly see through those political-campaign PR charades.  They've already seen through "Medicare vouchers", so don't expect them to put up with inadequate pseudo-coverage "solutions" anymore, either.

And since we at Edunuity and Healthy Future US are all about prevention:  it is more critical than ever to develop healthier whole-population habits, starting preK-12, to reduce our massive health care cost burden.  Whether we keep & reform the status quo system, or move to Medicare-for-All, or whatever--we must help Americans of all ages to develop healthier behavior, in order for us to reduce health costs to an affordable sustainable level--and for Americans to lead much healthier lives. 

Comments

  1. I agree with a lot of the points you made in this article. If you are looking for the Australia's Best Physiotherapy Practice Management Software, then visit Practice Management Software Australia. I appreciate the work you have put into this and hope you continue writing on this subject.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it a “Miracle Drug”?...if it Costs a Fortune and Creates Lifelong Dependency...&...Saggy Faces!?

[It’s been a while since our last blog post.  A lot has happened since– including some “miracles” ! So we’re going to do two posts in a row…] Normally we should all be happy about miracle drugs... shouldn't we ? Yes, there is lots of upside from taking semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Montjaro)--and upcoming new, even-more-miraculous drugs TBD:  losing huge amounts of weight quickly, a much lower risk of diabetes–and probably less heart disease and other chronic conditions as well.  But what if the “miracle” requires:   $200-300/week, with a lifetime cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars…  a drug that you can never quit…because if you stop taking it, you gain back all the weight it helped you lose–not to mention the chronic diseases which the drugs kept at bay… and it leaves your face (and the rest of your skin?) sagging …    (plus, it’s so new at such high dosages– who knows what happens after years of use…? ) No doubt, in spit...

Both/And: Personal & School & Social Responsibility for Health

Many people are promoting a false dichotomy for who/what to “blame” for decades of pervasive inactivity & unhealthy nutrition--the key preventable factors which have led to the majority of adults developing chronic disease. Some believe that people with preventable chronic diseases made a series of unhealthy choices for decades, for which they need to accept personal responsibility for the consequences. On the other side, a growing number of policymakers focus on the “social determinants of health.”  In other words, there are many things beyond your control, which impact what you eat & drink and how active you are.  This includes factors such as your family, neighborhood, school, employer, transportation, public safety, housing, community layout, etc. etc.  It’s those external social factors which determine your health destiny.   Actually, the personal and social are inextricably connected--not opposite ends of the spectrum.  Let’s consider the role...

Testing Our Patients/ce...

The US Preventive Services Task Force just recommended that people get tested for diabetes at a younger age: 35. Early detection will help prevent complications from untreated diabetes. “The lowered recommended age for screening ‘has really been driven by the obesity epidemic—greater rates of obesity in young people.’” (WSJ, 3/16/2021) If this preliminary draft recommendation is approved, many insurers will provide this testing for free. Actually, with about 20% of teens estimated to have prediabetes & 10% with severe obesity already, & 1/3 lower-income kids & children of color headed for diabetes, testing should start much earlier for at-risk young adults--perhaps @25 years old. The more I think about these statistics, the angrier I get. We should have declared a national child health emergency in the late 1970s, when the child obesity epidemic began. If those kids had been upper-income white children, we would have dealt with it much sooner. Yet in spite of some imp...