Sick Workers Left Behind

McCain’s fend-for-yourself approach to healthcare leaves older, sicker workers behind:

To the degree that happens, the employer-based market will become less healthy as sicker, older workers stay with their employer-based coverage while more of the healthier workers move to the individual market.

"What you'll see happening is average cost in the employer-market will go up and average cost in the individual market will go down," Fronstin said. "You'll start to get into a cycle where people at the margin start to leave employer coverage for individual coverage. At some point, employers will start to ask: Why am I doing this if my workers don't value it anymore? If I don't need to do this to be competitive in the labor market, why should I do it?"

And he'd do little to ease Americans’ healthcare pains:

Why should insurers work to lower prices or health care use when they can shun high-cost people in the first place? And what incentive do insurers have to invest now in promoting better health and improving the system when others will benefit later?

Comments (1) «

An older woman I know should be on disability, she is so sick, but she has to keep working to keep her medical coverage. She hss no resources to maintain her while she waits for Medicare to kick in, and she doesn't want to get charity medical care in the interval. It's really a very sad sitution. And shameful.

1

tylinCA on July 7, 2008 at 06:33 PM

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