Costly care

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: June 13, 2008

Business owners are being squeezed by the rising cost of providing health insurance to their employees. The benefit is a costly one, but those employees expect good health insurance benefits.

Employers both large and small provide health insurance to 174 million Americans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports, and “health care costs continue to grow at a record pace … small businesses are experiencing annual premium increases of 15.5 percent.”

Those rising costs threaten to push more Americans into the ranks of the uninsured as companies struggle to find a balance between the cost of this benefit and the need to remain profitable.

Recently, 35 representatives of small businesses in the Dan River Region attended a meeting with representatives of the National Federation for Independent Business Owners.

Over the past two decades, NFIB members have listed health care as a major worry. But it has been a long time since Washington has even tried to tackle the problem, leaving a mish-mash of state laws, plans, programs and charities to help Americans get the health care they need.

Locally, we’ve watched the development of The Free Clinic of Danville, which offers care to people who don’t have health insurance, and Piedmont Access To Health Services, a program for those who don’t have enough health insurance to get the care they need and those who receive Medicare and Medicaid.

By far, the worst off group are those 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance. They’re at the mercy of the system’s cruel economics. But even people who have health insurance may not have enough coverage to financially survive an expensive, catostrophic illness.

“There are plenty of options, just no affordable options,” Rita Smith of the Danville Cardiology Clinic said of health insurance options in Danville.

Some now call the rising cost of employee health insurance a tax on American businesses that saps profits and puts domestic companies at a competitive disadvantage with foreign competitors.

Dropping employee health care coverage would create two problems for businesses: It would hurt their ability to find, recruit and retain the best employees, and it would add to this country’s growing legions of uninsured people.

Either action could push — or more likely jolt — Washington out of its slumber on this issue, leading to far more radical and expensive proposals than we saw in 1993.

It’s up to Washington to find a way to fix the health care mess. Until the politicians fix this country’s health care problem, the owners of businesses both large and small will continue to struggle with rising costs their workers expect them to carry.