I think most corporations would prefer not to have to provide health insurance benefits for their employees. The costs of administration must be staggering. As Downtowner pointed out in her excellent diary, corporations, municipalities, and other employers are slapped with huge fees if one of their employees or employee's dependents has the gall to get sick. In Downtowner's case, the municipality funding her ex-husband's insurance ended up paying a fee higher than the cost of her care. In other words, the insurance company made a (small) profit on her illness.
The way insurance is supposed to work is spreading the risk: everyone, sick and healthy, pays premiums so that when extraordinary costs are incurred, there is enough in the pot to cover them.
Instead, insurance companies take in premiums from members, but instead of using the money in the pot to cover medical expenses, they use it for operating expenses and dividends to shareholders. Actual expenses are passed on to employers, individuals, and eventually all taxpayers.
Why aren't corporations protesting this industry's actions?
My guesses:
- They don't want anybody looking into their crooked practices too carefully, so they don't want to throw stones and draw attention to crooked business practices.
- Their CEO sits on an Insurance Co. board of directors, and thus benefits from the status quo.
- Their top executives are heavily invested in the insurance industry, and thus benefit from the status quo.
- Big companies can write off a million measly dollars or two and receive tax benefits (again passing on expenses to taxpayers)
- Small companies are terrified of making waves, and potentially losing ability to provide insurance at all, and thus not be able to attract high-quality employees.
When is the dam going to break? At some point corporations, big and small, aren't going to be willing to subsidize the murder by spreadsheet approach to health insurance.
How do we start the conversation with big business, explaining the bottom-line benefits of single-payer?
And why aren't the lower tax crowd focusing on how insurance companies are fleecing the taxpayers? They've become obsessed with the potential costs of single-payer or a public option, but ignore the true costs of illnesses making people uninsurable. Some genius Kossack needs to make up an easy-to-read graphic illustrating how the industry profits at taxpayer expense the way things are now.