Shifting The Cost of Health Care to You

One thing I never understood about the fierce opposition to health care reform is why someone would be against something that could help them financially.  Increasingly, employees are being forced to bear the cost of their own health insurance, as more and more companies lay the burden of increased premiums on their employees.

The Kaiser Family Foundation, in its 2010 Employer Health Benefits Survey reports that while the total jump in premiums last year was 3%, employee contributions rose 14%.  Workers are now paying, on average, $4,000 a year towards their health insurance.  According to the report, "since 2005, workers’ contributions to premiums have gone up 47 percent, while overall premiums rose 27 percent, wages increased 18 percent, and inflation rose 12 percent."  Additionally, many employers raised the deductible workers have to pay before they see any help from their employer.  Currently some 27% of workers have to pay for the first $1,000 for coverage before they receive anything from their health plans.

Given the dramatic increase in premium share, along with the low wage increases, many employees are worse off now than they were five years ago.  And, it isn't getting any better.  Employers know that in this economy they can force employees to accept worse coverage because many employees are afraid of losing even more.

By the 1940s, most industrialized nations had begun providing health care to its citizens.  In America, we ended up with employers providing that insurance, in part because wage caps during WWII led employers to give compensation to workers in other forms, such as health care benefits.  Employers are now reneging on their end of the bargain and, ironically, are also the loudest opponents of health care reform.

The massive shift in risk to employees for their health care and pensions has had no consequences for employers, corporations, and those who advocate for workers to bear the cost of benefits that employers used to provide.  Oddly, it has been Obama and those who want to protect pensions and enact reforms that would lower premiums that have been subject to the rage and fury of the Right.  I still can't help wondering though why a worker paying $4,000 a year for health insurance plan with high deductibles would buy into the rage.