Sure, I know how it started, with 18th century plantations and 19th century logging camps and company towns that had only one doctor, so the owner just paid him. Paternalism. The owner also supplied all the lodgings and meals.
But now that the vast majority work in cities, not remote areas, and all those other things are separate from work, why is the medical expense still considered a job perk instead of a personal expense?
From here:
Note that during the Presidential campaign, John McCain campaigned on removing this tax exemption for employer-based healthcare. Obama attacked that idea as hurting the poor little workers, and why do you hate healthcare anyway?
It’s called an incentive/benefit - the employer provides availability to a group plan in order to attract, and keep, qualified employees.
Most employers do this with greatly varying degrees of contribution. Some will provide coverage to the employee for free but family coverage is an is at employees expense, some will make a group plan available and only subsidize the cost to the employee’s coverage. some only make a group plan available - employee pays 100%. Some add options, such as life, ADD, Dental, Vision, etc
Employees are free to pursue employment with firms that provide the coverage they wish to have.
I must have missed that one. McCain was proposing a change that would increase taxes while raising business expenses for employers and medical expenses for employees?
And people wonder why he lost.
Unless the employee has a pre-existing condition that would prevent him from obtaining coverage for it. In that case they’re free to continue working for their employer, or to not have any coverage. I believe there are some people here that fall into that category.
I didn’t miss that one. I thought it was a dumb idea, as it would have reduced the amount of employees’ paychecks at the same time the economy was tanking.
McCain losing is no mystery. Bad candidate with a horribly ran campaign following a totally inept president with the same party name. Both may have been a Republican by name, but conservative - not hardly. The conservatives were pissed off enough at Bush, and saw McCain as a step in the wrong direction.
Not True - As long as you are covered by an existing group plan, pre-existing conditions are waved with the new employer’s group as long as there has not been a lapse in coverage
Really? From everybody (it seems) I hear modern health care is a legacy of the unions.
This is often cited as another reason to hate unions.
Kaiser Permenente did indeed originate when the Old Man established an employee hospital at the shipyards in the San Francisco Bay area.
Personally, I consider health care to be part of my compensation package, which means that I obliquely pay for it.
This is only important to me on the extremely rare occasion that I need to explain it to a KP employee.
Peace,
mangeorge
If you go to work for another company that has coverage, and if you don’t go into business for yourself, and if you weren’t laid off.
No. As I explained at the time, McCain’s plan was to replace the all-or-nothing tax-free employer-provided health insurance with a tax credit that you receive regardless of whether your health insurance is employer-provided or not. It would have kept the bias in favour of getting health insurance while removing the bias in favour of employer-provided health insurance instead of individual health insurance.
Health care, 40 hr work week, vacations, safe working conditions, overtime after 8 hrs, protection from indiscriminate firing, child labor laws the list for hating unions just goes on and on.,
Of course I enjoy all these bennies because I’m so special!
I think one of the reasons the current system continues is that it makes American workers slaves to their employers.
So he wanted to raise taxes so the gummint could hand out checks? That was one of those “only Nixon could go to China moments”.
Insurance companies sell plans more cheaply to companies because they are able to mandate that everyone in the company carry insurance–either through their company or a spouse’s plan or something. This is a good deal for the insurance companies because the problem with selling insurance on the individual level is that the least expensive people–the ones pretty sure they won’t get sick–don’t sign up, but all of the very expensive people (the ones that know they will get sick) do. By promising complete participation, businesses can negotiate with insurance companies.
That’s a bit cynical. I think the problem is that the big and/or powerful constituencies either benefit from the current system or are not hurt by it.
Old people don’t care because they have Medicare, corporations like it because they can offer a tax-free benefit to workers, workers who already have good insurance don’t care, insurance companies are making money hand over fist, and tort lawers are hoping to hit the lottery.
So that leaves people under 65 who don’t already have health insurance; and a goodly slice of them are being riled up by Fox to fear socialism.
Individual health insurance which, because the pool is smaller, is considerably more expensive than similar or even better coverage in a group, like an employer-based group, especially for the people who need affordable access to healthcare the most.
Everything you have said here is wrong.
The pool isn’t smaller unless the individual health insurance provider is a smaller company than the employer-based health insurance provider. Even if it is, a smaller pool means the stabilising effect is smaller, not that the service is more expensive.
Well part of the point was to introduce more competition into insurance markets. If you have to pick the healthcare plan your employer offers, insuance companies don’t care that much about you the customer. Instead they’ll worry about winning big corporate contracts.
Your are absolutely 100% incorrect. The risk-pool is not the entire group of customers the insurance company has, it is the group for which the insurance applies when you buy/negotiate coverage. As an individual you are a group of one, so they look at your individual risk. They will also look at the demographics of a company, and the number of employees, when they set the rates for a company’s group plan.