OPINION: FOUR KEY THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HEALTHCARE

Health care, so far perhaps the biggest issue in the Democratic primary, is also the most complicated issue facing government and the public. Unfortunately the debate is filled with persistent misconceptions, from the role insurance company profits play in health care costs to who is actually paying for workers’ health coverage.

Clarifying four fundamental health care fallacies could make it easier for voters to square some of the Democratic proposals — and their critiques — with reality:

Employers write checks that cover most health insurance premiums for employees and their dependents. But as the Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt once explained, employer-sponsored insurance is like a pickpocket taking money out of your wallet at a bar and buying you a drink. You appreciate the cocktail until you realize you paid for it yourself.

With health coverage, employers write the check to the insurer, but employees bear the cost of the premium — the entire premium, not just the portion listed as their contribution on their pay stub. The premium money that goes to the insurance company is cash that employers would otherwise deposit in employees’ accounts like the rest of their salary.

The fallacy is in thinking an employer’s contribution comes out of profits. In fact, higher health insurance premiums mean lower wages for workers. Since 1999, health insurance premiums have increased 147 percent and employer profits have increased 148 percent. But in that time, average wages have hardly moved, increasing just 7 percent. Clearly workers’ wages, not corporate profits, have been paying for higher health insurance premiums.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HIV rates rising: Could new forms of PrEP help?

 In 2021, HIV continues to be a disease with huge national and international impact. There are over 1.2 million people in the US estimated to be living with HIV today, and approximately 1.7 million new infections occurred globally last year. In parts of the US, HIV rates are currently climbing among underserved populations. We’ve seen a recent epidemic among people without stable housing in Boston, and similar outbreaks in areas like West Virginia and Philadelphia. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the problem because many people have had less access to testing and medical care for HIV. Now more than ever, medicines known as pre-exposure prophylaxis — or PrEP — could help reverse this worrisome trend by preventing people from getting HIV. And new formulations could make it easy for a much broader range of people at risk for HIV to use PrEP. Already, one is being reviewed by the FDA. What is PrEP, and is it an option for me? PrEP is a combination of medicines that significa...
Read more

WERE YOU NOTIFIED ABOUT MISSING TAX FORMS FOR YOUR ACA SUBSIDY? BLAME COVID.

When they file their annual taxes they complete an IRS form that reconciles how much they received in advance tax credits against their actual income for the year. The letter from the marketplace said they hadn’t filed for 2019, but Schenker knew they had — just as they have every year. “I was more annoyed than anything else,” Schenker, 55, said, remembering an earlier enrollment problem that took months to resolve. “I didn’t want to get stuck in some sort of appeals category.” Schenker’s 25-year-old daughter, Kaily Schenker, who is part owner of the family’s organic farm, got the same letter about her plan. Schenker helps her with her taxes, and she also filed the Form 8962 paperwork, he said. Officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees the ACA marketplaces, confirmed that some consumers received notices from the agency alerting them that, according to the IRS, they hadn’t filed a tax return or reconciled their advance payments for tax credit...
Read more

Healthy Habits May Help You Live More Than 10 Years Longer

New research published by the American Heart Association (AHA) suggests that adults in the US who follow 5 healthy lifestyle habits may live more than a decade longer compared with people who follow none of the 5 habits. These 5 habits are: eating a healthy diet getting regular exercise not smoking staying at a healthy weight limiting alcohol Starting at age 50, men in the study were estimated to have an average life expectancy of 14 years and women were estimated to have an average life expectancy of 12 years when they followed all 5 habits. The study was published April 30, 2018 in the AHA journal Circulation. The study authors point out that the US ranks 31st in the world for life expectancy among those born in 2015, even though it’s one of the richest countries in the world and spends more on health care per person as a percent of gross domestic product than any other country. According to the authors, the US healthcare system focuses mainly on drug discovery and disease management...
Read more