Employer Mandates?
Health care reform has become one of if not the biggest issue for employers today. On June 30, 2009 we witnessed one of the biggest retailers in the United States Walmart endorse an employer mandate that gives the employer an opportunity to pay towards some coverage of benefits for their employees. I think this was a very instrumental step as it forced the hands of many organizations to say "Yes" some coverage is necessary and "Yes" we should contribute something.
Now I will tell you that conceding to this employer mandate is probably in the best interest of a company like Walmart as the introduction of the free-rider proposal proposed by those in the Senate Finance committee would have had them stuck with a law that would have been very costly to businesses with low-wage workers. And we know that Walmart has plenty of them.
Health care coverage should be a right for every American. However, we do not want laws and legislation passed into place by our government that could adversely affect a specific population or group of people such as low wage earners. To think of solutions is not only to think of providing catastrophic and limited medical liability plans, but creating incentives for insurance providers to write groups of small business owners or businesses in general without penalizing them.
The creation of associations to create volume based buying power and creating modular based insurance that would allow an individual to pay for what they want such as 3-5 doctors visits a year, pay towards a predefined a la carte list of services similar to putting away money in a flexible spending account but allowing the individual to use those dollars towards a predefinted a la carte list of services. If this money was not used up at the end of the year, it could continue to roll over, so the individual could use it as the need arises. This type of creative solution would on some level address the issue of those who do not have insurance and the uninsured.
I always say flexibility is often times easier to get people to buy into instead of mandates. So, why not think outside of the box. One thing we do know is that we can take the best practices of what some countries are doing right and run fast from the practices that do not work. This in turn would provide us with a framework to brainstorm and really think about the needs of the American people and not just the wants of the big business insurance providers.
Now I will tell you that conceding to this employer mandate is probably in the best interest of a company like Walmart as the introduction of the free-rider proposal proposed by those in the Senate Finance committee would have had them stuck with a law that would have been very costly to businesses with low-wage workers. And we know that Walmart has plenty of them.
Health care coverage should be a right for every American. However, we do not want laws and legislation passed into place by our government that could adversely affect a specific population or group of people such as low wage earners. To think of solutions is not only to think of providing catastrophic and limited medical liability plans, but creating incentives for insurance providers to write groups of small business owners or businesses in general without penalizing them.
The creation of associations to create volume based buying power and creating modular based insurance that would allow an individual to pay for what they want such as 3-5 doctors visits a year, pay towards a predefined a la carte list of services similar to putting away money in a flexible spending account but allowing the individual to use those dollars towards a predefinted a la carte list of services. If this money was not used up at the end of the year, it could continue to roll over, so the individual could use it as the need arises. This type of creative solution would on some level address the issue of those who do not have insurance and the uninsured.
I always say flexibility is often times easier to get people to buy into instead of mandates. So, why not think outside of the box. One thing we do know is that we can take the best practices of what some countries are doing right and run fast from the practices that do not work. This in turn would provide us with a framework to brainstorm and really think about the needs of the American people and not just the wants of the big business insurance providers.
Labels: health care reform, health insurance, human resource
posted by Fawn at
2:49 PM
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