Take health insurance off employers’ backs — they’ll gladly give up the tax credit
-- -- --
Lori Shandro Oüten is on the front line of the health insurance crisis. A former certified public accountant, she opened
Oüten works with individuals who need to buy insurance on Your Health Idaho, the
Both of her client bases are stressed and stretched, she says. With mounting questions and concerns about
"This past
Q: How would you fix the Affordable Care Act?
Assuming the cost of health care isn't going to change? Well, there should be transparency in understanding where the real problems lie and in understanding what the real cost factors are.
If you took into account what our country already spends, what state and federal governments spend, what companies spend on the HR departments you need to figure out how to do it all, and the lost tax revenue from companies deducting what they pay for benefits, if you took all of that into account, we could afford to give everybody access to coverage.
Is that single payer?
Not really. That's a little bit how they do it in
If we could broaden that idea and re-evaluate and redistribute the money we're already spending, we could provide everyone with a stipend and let them buy their own plan. It [the stipend] is based on the cost of the silver [midlevel] plan, but you can choose to buy a bronze [low-end] or gold [high-end] plan.
It's so wrong that the people I work with either can't afford the coverage, or they can't afford to use it when they need to. It's embarrassing that our country can't figure this out.
Why do you think that would work?
Most employers that I work with would rather not have to deal with providing health care. They'd rather run their tech company or printing business and buy new equipment. They don't want the deduction. They want someone else to provide that, and no one is.
Even if you had your open enrollment period and the employer brought in a consultant to help people make choices, that would be so much cheaper and more effective than the employer saying, "I'm going to choose these plans and spend all this money on it," and they're not even sure it's what their employees want.
I wonder, if everyone had health care and didn't have to stress about it, how much bigger would the [gross domestic product] be? What if the average citizen didn't ... have to plan their lives around jobs because they provide benefits? What if they were free to start the company they always wanted instead of working for someone just for the benefits?
What's the bottom line?
We have to reduce health care costs. Insurance companies can't control the cost of health care, and no one is trying to do anything about it.
And I don't know what the incentive is for health care providers to govern themselves.
When has any pharmaceutical company or medical devices company said, "You know what? I don't need to make this much. Let's find a way to change things so we don't have to charge so much."
Physicians should be paid for maintaining someone's health, not for every service they provide.
People think hospitals are nonprofit. Wouldn't it be great if their way of reinvesting in the community could also reduce costs? Instead, they put the profits into facilities, property, landscaping and sound systems in surgery suites. They should figure out what they really need to provide the best health care and use their profits to subsidize the cost.
The views of all five experts will appear
-- Dr.
--
--
--
___
(c)2017 The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho)
Visit The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho) at www.idahostatesman.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Idaho’s insurance regulator says it’s time to bring back pre-Obamacare health plans
EDITORIAL: Stop trying to kill Obamacare
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News