...and although there are many more things that have to happen, major healthcare reform is really the major link between failing companies (although not nearly the only cause for massive financial failures), issues surrounding under coverage (or lack of coverage), especially for those who rely on a job for healthcare coverage and the general health issues that this country faces due to lack of preventative care as a trade off for paying other bills to "just get by" and hope that you don’t get too sick.
While there are so many factors at play here, one thing that I have long felt (as have many others, I am sure) is the ridiculousness of a reliance upon having a job (and really, the same job) in order to receive basic affordable health care coverage. And that is really what I want to focus on in this post – even though there are many other issues that must be radically changed to "fix" the economy, including but not limited to retirement options such as defined benefit plans as opposed to the 401(k) type of defined tax free contribution plans which are tied to the stock market, some sort of mortgage relief for those who were defrauded by lenders and meet certain criteria as far as income, a major investment in infrastructure that will create jobs and fix our crumbling roads, bridges, railways and basically bring this country into the 21st century.
But all this goes back to the basic premise that (1) you need to be employed (and not change jobs in order to avoid the dreaded "pre-existing condition") in order to have the most basic of coverage and (2) it is an employer’s responsibility to provide healthcare coverage to its’ employees – therefore tying up a substantial amount of its’ money that could otherwise be used for more jobs or more investment in the business itself.
Back in 2005, GM sounded the alarm since it was facing a $1 billion health care cost for the year, and was looking for some major changes. While the call wasn’t necessarily for something along the lines of single payer, there were some interesting ideas thrown out:
While Wagoner will not call for a federal takeover of the health care system, he is expected to challenge business leaders, Congress, the Bush administration, the health industry and consumers to work together to mitigate health costs.
"Clearly, the American industry has a disadvantage in terms of health care cost because in Japan and Europe, those costs are socialized," said Michael Flynn, director of the University of Michigan's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation.
"Whether it is appropriate for private companies such as GM to be asking for government relief on health care could be a matter for debate," Flynn said.
In the speech, Wagoner will support the establishment of a "consumer driven" health system that encourages people to seek out the most cost-effective care and drugs, and rewards those who do.
He's also likely to advocate a national plan to address catastrophic health expenses.
GM has long employed a wellness approach toward curbing health care costs among its employees by encouraging the use of generic prescription drugs, which are less expensive than name brands, smoking cessation, and fitness programs. But any gains have not been enough to outpace increases in the costs of drugs and medical care.
Interestingly, the same article cited around 700 CEOs (one half of those asked) who indicated that health care costs were going to be the largest cost increase over the subsequent year (i.e., 2006). And since then, costs have skyrocketed even more. But even back in 2005, there was mention of a competitive disadvantage against other countries with "socialized medicine", and there was even a call for a national plan to address catastrophic health expenses.
And that was back in 2005, where there was a major headwind in Congress as well as the White House. Now, with Obama as President-elect, Daschle in at HHS, a Democratic Congress willing (hopefully) to seriously tackle the healthcare mess and a public that is very much behind a push for major reform, something can be hopefully done to help millions of Americans.
However, with the financial services industry and now the automotive industry (and who knows what the next industry or industries will come with hat in hand) looking for tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to prolong the inevitable as opposed to actually coming up with a plan that shows how the money will be used to benefit the companies and their employees over the long term, the issue of company-provided healthcare as well as the costs and restrictions on individuals is one that should be part of the discussion.
Now, I don’t have an answer to all of this, and certainly there are problems with aspects of single payer/government run healthcare, but there are some things that will help Americans as well as companies save money and receive quality basic healthcare coverage. This would involve a transition from employer-provided healthcare coverage to a similar cost coverage that the workers can pay for directly – whether these costs are administered by the government or overseen by the government or regulated by the government. This would involve a major focus on preventative care which would be a much smaller up front or annual cost that would avoid a number of major health crises (or as GM indicated above, a catastrophic health expense). And this would involve some sort of rules regarding keeping employees’ coverage for a period of time during the transition or to ensure that there is no lapse in coverage. Ideally, there would be some sort of requirement for companies to reinvest the monies not spent on healthcare coverage into jobs, research or development, etc. but I don’t know how feasible that is.
In either event, the fact that healthcare costs are skyrocketing is not just a fact that impacts individuals and families. It is something that ties the hands of companies both large and small, resulting in a major cash crunch over the past few years. And until American families are able to get access to affordable basic healthcare coverage – including the ability to receive coverage that is portable regardless of where and if they are working, as well as companies not being stuck with a major piece of their overall expenses being tied up in providing coverage to employees, we will see industry after industry suffer from major cash issues as well as more job cuts that can be avoided.