“The tapeworm of the American economy.”

Health care has gotten SO bad that even the “healthcare privileged” are pissed off! Yes, those would be the folks who work at Fortune 500 companies. They have the best health insurance in the country.

Of course, it’s no secret that for years business owners have been frustrated by our healthcare system. In fact, Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha, once characterized health care as “the tapeworm of the American economy.”

He went on to say “the high cost of insuring employees remains a drag on business” and that “the healthcare problem is the No.1 problem of America and American business.”

That was way back in 2012. Are things any better now, after the ACA?

Not if you listen to the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA), which was just established in February 2016. The HTA includes twenty of our country’s largest corporations such as American Express, Caterpillar, Hartford Financial Services, Ingersoll Rand and Verizon.

…a patchwork of complicated, expensive and wasteful systems

The HTA describes the problem like HEAL does. They believe, as we do, that “America’s health care system is unsustainable.” In their words:

[American healthcare] is a patchwork of complicated, expensive and wasteful systems. The time has come to stop adding bandages and address what’s fundamentally wrong. For employers and employees, the price of premiums, copayments and deductibles is rising at a rate that is making health care unaffordable to millions of workers, and to their employers as well.

The HTA seeks “to transform the system and create a better way of delivering health care benefits to workers.” They believe that “by banding together, they can make a bigger difference.”

Sounds good to us! But wait a minute. Implicit in their “solution” is a notion we don’t agree with: Employers should provide health insurance to their employees. 

Should your healthcare depend on your job?

No way! It’s just unreasonable that people need to be employed to get access to quality health care. Children don’t work, for example. Neither do many people with chronic illnesses or disabilities. Ditto for seniors. And of course, what about people whose jobs are wiped out periodically by our lovely economic contractions?

What about them – the people who don’t or can’t work because of their age, their health status, or the recession? HTA is silent. But we know. They get their health care from the government. And right there, you have a multi-tier healthcare system that’s intrinsically unequal and discriminatory.

Multi-tier healthcare – you don’t want it. 

Here’s how it works:

Low/no income adults and children get health insurance through Medi-Cal, which has a very narrow network of doctors (a huge barrier to care). But at least their co-pays or deductibles are zero or near zero.

Seniors get health insurance through Medicare (totally different than Medi-Cal) which 97% of doctors accept but which only covers 80% of certain costs.

Employed people at small businesses might get health insurance (or not). But if they do, their plan is selected based on its cost to their employer. The employer is buying the policy, right? And employers are increasingly choosing to save money by passing costs on to their employees through high-deductible plans and/or lowering the share of premium that the employer pays.

Then there’s the people HTA is talking about –  the people who already enjoy the greatest health benefits in the country (except maybe the US Congress). Yes, the employees of the 20 giant corporations who founded the HTA are the very definition of “healthcare privileged.”

Seriously, if the folks at Coca Cola, DuPont and IBM think our healthcare system sucks, they should try being poor, disabled or unemployed! Because then they’ll see that our system doesn’t just suck, it kills.

Marketplace efficiencies? For real? 

Let’s take a closer look at how they want to fix things. They want to begin by focusing on “the supply chain” which refers to marketplace efficiencies.

You know, getting rid of the middleman. Are they talking about having company-controlled provider networks? Yep, and that isn’t so good if your employer has religious objections to your medical needs, or if the company doctor doesn’t believe your back really hurts.

They also want to pool data about their employees’ healthcare needs. They promise they won’t identify individuals’ data. We sure hope not, because what if they find out that you’ve got AIDS, or cancer, or suffer from depression?

Oh, yes, and they want to educate their employees about health care. Not about company benefit plans, mind you, but about actual health care. What does that mean? Could it mean HR directs you to a community hospital instead of to a university medical center? Or they tell you to lose 15 pounds? Or, what? You lose your job?

Finally, they claim that doctors and patients “aren’t armed with the full range of facts” and unnecessarily use expensive, ineffective medicines. That may be true sometimes. But for employers to step in and tell the doctors and employees which medicines offer the best value, well, that’s a bit much, don’t you think?

It’s scary because these healthcare privileged corporate folks realize that there’s a problem, but they are completely out of touch with the realities faced by the rest of us.

Their solutions aren’t intended to help us all. They won’t help the unemployed, or the disabled. They won’t even help employees of small businesses. Their solutions only help themselves.

 

How about a solution that meets everybody’s needs

We need a healthcare system that works for everybody, rich or poor, employed or not. We need solutions that offer all of us healthcare security while holding down medical inflation. We need Improved, Expanded Medicare for All.

And oh, yes, there are business owners who totally get what we’re talking about. In fact, in our next article we’ll discuss one of them. He even made a terrific documentary called Fix It: Health Care at the Tipping Point!

Wanna see it? Check it out: Fix-It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point