Lessons from overseas
Looking around the world can burn in to us a clear lesson. If you don’t have a universal health system, you don’t just jeopardize equity, but you also create inefficiency and increased costs.
Ending up without a universal health system isn’t just bad for people, it’s bad for business and bad for the economy.
When I recently spoke to the National Press Club, I talked about General Motors, which is, as we all know, one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers. It has just announced record losses and lay-offs.
What you may not know is that GM is one of the largest health care purchasers in the United States. GM finances the health care of more than one million current and past employees and their dependents at a cost of about 7 billion Australian dollars a year. This adds more than 2000 Australian dollars to the cost of every car that rolls off the production line. This is more than the cost of the steel in the car,
The natural reaction of employers is to try and get out of providing health insurance, or at least to finance a lesser portion of it.
GM has already negotiated lower levels of coverage as part of their plan to stay afloat. Other companies are trying to get out of providing health insurance at all, with the number of US companies providing insurance dropping 10 per cent in the past five years.
But this is not getting business off the hook. Individual States faced with rising health care needs and dropping rates of private and company-provided insurance are finding new ways to put the burden on businesses, including American icons like Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart employs low-skilled and low-paid workers and by doing so can exploit low-wage Medicaid programs. Each new Wal-Mart worker is costing the average US state about 1200 Australian dollars a year in Medicaid benefits.
In response, the State of Maryland has just passed legislation that requires companies of more than 10,000 employees like Wal-Mart to spend at least eight percent of their payroll on workers’ health care or pay the difference into the State’s Medicaid fund. This legislation may be targeted at Wal-Mart, but its impact is likely to be more widespread.
We have seen what can happen in the American model – cost pressures become so large that even the largest and most iconic companies can falter and are then forced to cut these costs through reduced conditions for their employees.
And individuals suffer most, with the leading cause of bankruptcy in America being for unpaid medical bills. Half of the uninsured owe money to hospitals, and a third are being pursued by debt collectors.
And it’s not just in America.
For example, in Germany, where the health system is largely funded by employers and employees, high unemployment and rising costs have also led to a situation where there are large gaps in delivering health to those who need it most.
And the examples could go on and on....
full: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-rTLFfUcibK.Sa1r1GNI88GQ9Ag--?cq=1&p=315#comments
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