When I lived in New Zealand, my car insurance cost $40 US a year. The reason? We were only paying for collision, we had an old car, and, most important, our car insurance was not paying for accident victims’ health care because New Zealand had national health care. That was great for me, but the fact is:
national health care would most benefit US corporations.
My New Zealand experience shows that how health care is provided affects far more than visits to doctors and who pays the bills.
The true costs of health care delivery are so deeply embedded in our national ecosystem that they are invisible.
The discussion about our nation’s health care tends to stop at just a few basic facts: The US is number 1 in per capita expenditures for health care, yet lags at number 72 for performance on level of health and at 37 for overall health system performance. This is achieved despite – and because of – the millions of us who have no health coverage.
Employers who always assumed health care had to be an employment benefit are now reconsidering. Traditionally, employers have seen their choices two. To attract good employees, they can provide private insurance, knowing that it will be more expensive and for lower quality services each year. Or they can provide no health insurance and attract only workers who will take a job with no health care coverage.
National health care has been off the agenda for most employers, but the starkness of these choices is forcing a change in thinking.
Let me help make that decision easier for them.
There are many costs employers now shoulder that are driven by the cost of our private health care system. The cost of all sorts of insurance are affected. To go back to my auto insurance. Because my New Zealand car insurance did not have to pay for accident victims’ health care it decreased what I paid for my car insurance
But costs were also lower, because everyone was covered.
This meant there was no bureaucratic system to decide who was at fault or whether an injury arose from an automobile accident. The focus was directly on providing care to the injured.
Consider workers compensation and the enormous bureaucracies that provide and manage employers’ workers compensation programs. Add to that the bureaucracies that decide whether an injury through employment and is therefore covered. This bureaucracy includes workers compensation lawyers, clinics, and managers, all focused on the question of where the injury arose.
Take a look at the annual health insurance shuffle where, every year, US employers go through the time-consuming and expensive quest for affordable health care. Each year they present the gloomy results to unhappy workers. And then employer benefits staff and employees must spend unproductive hours dealing with coverage issues. This time – and money – would be better spent improving a company’s products and services.
Each year more and more companies decide to opt out and let their workers go naked - with no health coverage.
Some, such as Wal-Mart use their refusal to provide accessible health insurance as a way to compete with employers who do. Their competitors’ choice is the low road of not providing health insurance or bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart avails itself of state-provided health insurance by forcing local institutions to pick up the tab.
General Motors has high health insurance costs because it provides coverage to an older workforce and more retirees than do its competitors. With national health care coverage, those cost differentials would vanish
Being number one in health costs is forcing even patients with health insurance into bankruptcy That has its own costs in dollars and stress.
Health care distorts job decisions. Employees take and stay in jobs just so they have health care coverage for themselves and their families. We all lose when workers vegetate in jobs that do not make the highest use of their abilities and interests.
All this is without considering savings generated by the economies of scale from a national health care system. It would eliminate expensive advertising to entice customers, the needs to pay out dividends to shareholders and to make a profit, CEO salaries, and the unproductive human infrastructure whose days are spent denying health care.
Nowhere is it written that health care coverage must come from employers.
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