US Employers: The Impact of Rising Health Care Costs
The Health Care Crisis: How This Impacts US Employers
The rising cost of health care is hurting US employers. Starbucks spends more on health care than it does on coffee beans; Ford spends more on health care than steel. Rising health care costs reduce the ability of US employers to compete globally and make it harder for them to pay higher wages to their employees.
We pay a high cost for health care today and still we have employers faced with the choice of either having money to pay higher wages, or money to cover increased health insurance premiums. The cost of providing work-based health care is a growing economic burden on US employers.
Increases in the cost of health insurance have outpaced the increase in general inflation and the increase of wages to employees. Employers have faced double-digit increases in insurance premiums for their employees. Costs are out of control and there is a need to have strong cost containment/cost management features built into the system. There are many efficiencies that health care could learn from strong business models.
US businesses who complete in a global marketplace face an expense that companies from other nations don't - US employers spend a growing portion of their budget on work-based insurance for their employees.
Employers don't want to pay for another huge government bureaucracy. Instead we should use the best of American ingenuity and expertise and learn from the experiences of other states and other countries. What is created will be uniquely American in its design.
We want a system where work-based costs are equitably shared by those employers who offer insurance and those who don't. A better health system can offer improved access to health education, prevention and primary care which will result in a more reliable and productive workforce. We want to design a system that is effective, efficient, affordable and gets the best return on investment of public dollars.
