Employer Provided Healthcare Insurance

Why I am in favor of universal care. 

I'm a small business owner. I own part of  mid sized company. We provide pretty damn good health insurance to our employees without having crazy deductibles.  We are self funded - meaning we don't use a large national provider to obtain our health insurance.

We spend a friggin fortune on health insurance.  Every few years we invest 100s of labor hours investigating new health insurance plans, evaluating our overall risk, We do ask employees to pay about 40% of the cost of their health insurance. We pay the rest.

We pay claims made against the plan.  We pay an administrator organization. The administrator organization gets claims and invoices sent by healthcare providers.  We never know who exactly is consuming healthcare or what any one person consumes.  So privacy and confidentiality is maintained.

Balance risk

I'm pretty new to this level of business ownership.  I have to tell you, the group of  business owners meet on several occasions and review our healthcare plan.  It's a sobering meeting. Why? Because we are self funded, getting cost projections right, deciding on how much cost sharing, prescription coverage, deductibles, and co-pays are required is a balancing act. We sincerely care about the health of our employees, but also have to balance the risk against the financial health of the organization.

We can't provide insurance so generous that we put ourselves out of business in the events a couple of major health events were to occur.  Sure we have insurance for our insurance in case our monthly payouts go beyond a certain level - but that is one of those things that if you use it, it gets more expensive to the point of making our plan too expensive for the company, and too expensive for our employees.

Benefits 

So here's the bottom line. universal care will get employers out of the business of health insurance. Sure - business will have a tax increase to pay for their employee health care. Sure employees will see a tax increase to pay for a "fair share". Properly done - yes that is a big "if" - it will have many benefits:

• Ensure all citizens get a minimum basic level of medical care available
• Rein in costs for pharmaceuticals by making the health service a massive buyer
• Insulate employers from risks and the costs associated with mitigating that risk as employers will have an even playing field for heatlh insurance 
• Lead to better employer mobility and choice by not hand-cuffing families and employees to employers just to ensure healthcare

Obstacles and Risks 

Sounds utopian right? It is. There are some serious risks with this that need to be hashed out. (With all stakeholders involved. ):

• Government Inefficiency. How can the plan be run, operated, and administered more efficiently, accurately, and fairly for all involved? 
• How can we manage over-consumption? 
• How can we ensure access to necessary procedures, medications, etc.? 
• How can costs, malpractice, privacy, and practices be standardized and fairly set? 
• What can we do with existing private health insurance providers, plans, and participants? 
• What will happen to private plans for public employees, military, etc.?

I've got my own ideas about much of this. But, IMHO, our current system needs to change, to become more accessible, more humane.  We are the only advanced nation without a solid minimum healthcare plan to cover all citizens. 

Get out of Healthcare

As an employer, I want to get the hell out of the healthcare business. It is NONE of my business as an employer.  If there's a national plan, and I still want to pay for additional insurance for my employees and their families, I should be able to. Period.