Comments on: Death, Healthcare and The Employer Albatross

By: Death, Healthcare and The Employer Albatross | HRM Today

Death, Healthcare and The Employer Albatross | HRM Today — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:07:09 +0000

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By: Shawn Clausing

Shawn Clausing — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:19:09 +0000

I think employers should be removed from the healthcare mix.

If that were the case, individuals could land the job which suits them best, rather than end up working for a company just because they offer the best healthcare benefits package.

Currently, small businesses simply cannot compete with the big guys when it comes to salary/benefit packages. Removing health benefits from the compensation package would help to level the playing field between small and large firms…. See More

My father has been running his small business for 25 years, and I know firsthand how difficult it is for them to obtain an affordable health insurance plan. Because the premiums he is quoted are so high, he does not provide health insurance coverage to his employees. He can compete with salaries, but not with the health benefit packages offered by large corporations.

Everyone, please ask yourself the following two questions:

1) Who would you rather have choose your health insurance plan: you or your employer?

2) Would you rather work somewhere you love, or somewhere just because they provide you with health insurance?

I believe that if we ended employer-based health coverage we could achieve an affordable healthcare system for all individuals.

By: mark.stelzner

mark.stelzner — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:13:34 +0000

I have the smartest readers on the planet. Great comments all. It’s crunch time on this issue so I hope people are taking the time to do their homework and let their voice be heard!

By: human resources healthcare | HUMAN RESOURCES

human resources healthcare | HUMAN RESOURCES — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:04:34 +0000

[...] Inflexion Point Â» Blog Archive Â» Death, Healthcare and The … [...]

By: Bill Kutik

Bill Kutik — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:54:47 +0000

Typo: 39 percent increase sought by Wellpoint.

By: Bill Kutik

Bill Kutik — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:53:08 +0000

Sorry, Mark, but I’m not so much concerned about who pays for health insurance but rather how it ended up in the hands of for-profit companies — including the 13 Blue Cross & Blue Shields owned by Wellpoint, now trying to raise individual coverage premiums in your new home town by 13 percent, despite recent profits of $2.7 billion.

Why are companies that openly say they won’t pay out more than 70 cents for every premium dollar collected (CA law), the only sources of insurance. Why are they all in it for the money? Perhaps my college classmate Dave Blumenthal’s article (thanks for the link) will explain that as well.

Meanwhile, people with a limited time to invest in learning more might listen to Jim O’Connell, Ceridian’s inside the Beltway guy for legislative affair, explain his view of what’s going on at http://www.billkutikradioshow.com. Which you can get from iTunes or listen on your computer.

By: fran melmed

fran melmed — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:14:29 +0000

other good reading about patient control, data, and our muddled system can be found in “the decision tree” by thomas goetz. i’m working my way through it now. while it doesn’t equip you to suddenly be in control of your outcomes — the system is still a major obstacle — it gives you a fresh way of viewing the potential future of health care.

By: akaBruno

akaBruno — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:09:49 +0000

I would also highly recommend reading Paul Starr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Social Transformation of American Medicine,” which was prescient in 1982 about the rise of the bureaucratic conglomerate of insurance companies.

By: fran melmed

fran melmed — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:09:34 +0000

mark, this is fabulous. i wish i could find the other “this american life” podcast where they share interviews with insurance agents who dump people or put amazing obstacles in their way to getting the care they need.

i’d love two things — first, is for us to move past employer-provided benefits. the second is that, as we move along the continuum toward this, that employers invest more in better dialogue and more sophisticated, better solutions to address the current situation. companies have not done a good job outlining to their employees why they are messing with what employees consider to be their private affair: their health. nor have they done a good job respecting and better engaging their employees and their families in creative, patient/employee-centric solutions that help them be in better control of their health and to make hard-to-make changes.

thanks for pulling this together for us,
f

By: Mark Bennett

Mark Bennett — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:24:17 +0000

Well said, Mark, and thank you for sharing sources of information from which folks can get a more balanced and objective perspective rather than the too-be-expected posturing and brinkmanship we see in the news. Employer provided health care is one of those important history lessons that just never got the attention it deserved. It’s important for people to understand how we got here, not that it will completely answer the question of how to “fix” it, but to better understand the forces at work. We’ve already seen what happens when those who feel they “have all the votes” try to ramrod something through. American politics is a perfect example of how everybody will continue to try to squeeze the best deal out of an already won situation until they break it again, because in the end, that’s all they were using it for.