Today let’s tackle something counter-intuitive. Namely:

If you like your current healthcare benefits, you are actually PRO-reform. Surprise! And yes, I know you don’t believe me so hear me out for a minute.

I understand you are probably one of the most vocal opponents of reform. You feel like your excellent benefits package is being threatened by all this talk of change. There are certainly lots of fear-mongers out there preying on that perception.

But let me tell you why, if you like what you’ve got, you really are pro-reform.

Employer-Based Benefits and Government Programs

Typically, if you like your benefits you are getting them either:

1. Through your employer, or
2. Through Medicare or another government program

You are indeed fortunate, as your benefits are likely to be fairly affordable and provide comprehensive coverage for pre-existing conditions, prescriptions, and preventive care. You are also probably pretty nervous that all this talk of healthcare reform means these benefits might be taken away from you.

So when Senator Joe Lieberman stands up and says most of the healthcare reform initiatives can wait, you breathe a huge sigh of relief. Not so fast—here’s what he means:

- As a politician, the easiest thing to do is nothing: Not rocking the boat helps his poll numbers go up so he can get re-elected.
- He won’t feel the effects of doing nothing about healthcare: Congressmen and women enjoy the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, the widest selection of health benefits in the country, for less than 2% of their rank-and-file $174,000 salary. If costs go up, taxpayers cover the increase.

Why Pro-Status Quo = Pro-Reform

For you there is no such magic formula. Here is why your great benefits, and their cost to you, will not stay as they currently are.

First, the current trend of insurance costs is unsustainable. The price of insurance has risen 95.2% since 2000, while income has only risen 17.5%. These are findings from a study by Families USA, a non-profit that advocates for affordable healthcare (see External Links for the study URL).

What are you getting for that enormous increase? Fewer benefits. Higher deductibles. And bigger co-pays or coinsurance.

Let’s look at how it breaks down in Pennsylvania for an employer-purchased family and individual health plan in the tables below:

Group Health Insurance Premiums 2000-2008

Family
2000 Premium: $6,721 (Employer Share: $5,424; Worker Share: $1,297)
2008 Premium: $13,116 (Employer Share: $9,955; Worker Share: $3,161)
2000-2008 % Increase: 95.1% (Employer: 83.5%; Worker: 143.7%)

Individual
2000 Premium: $2,467 (Employer Share: $2,094; Worker Share: $373)
2008 Premium: $4,782 (Employer Share: $3,879; Worker Share: $904)
2000-2008 % Increase: 93.8% (Employer: 85.2%; Worker: 142.4%)

Worker Salary
2000 $24,834
2008 $$29,188
2000-2008 % Increase: 17.5%

Those are some ugly numbers for Pennsylvania workers. Their share of health insurance premiums went up 143.7% (family) and 142.4% (individual), while their salary only increased 17.5%!

The reasons for the increases include:

- Medical treatments—rising cost, increased use
- Inadequate oversight of insurance companies
- Lack of competition among insurers
- Cost shifting from uninsured (growing) to insured (shrinking)

Moreover, insurance costs are rising ever faster. Your employer and the government cannot afford to absorb these increases, so more and more of those costs will be passed on to you. In fact fewer employers are even offering benefits, from 69% in 2000 down to 63% in 2008.

So if you get kicked out into the individual insurance market, you will need both More Options and More Consumer Protections. That is what the healthcare reform bills like HR 3200 and the Senate HELP Committee's Affordable Health Choices Act are all about.

They also contain Medicare payment reforms (primarily to hospitals) to wring waste from the system, encourage providers to become more efficient, and most importantly, ensure there is enough funding to maintain seniors’ plush benefits coverage.

Yes, you read that right–there is NO benefits reduction for seniors in the healthcare reform bills.

Furthermore, the much maligned public option is there to increase competition (something co-ops with no experience or clout cannot do) and bring down costs over the long term, meaning larger paychecks instead of your current shrinking one.

Your Money Out The Window

Aetna CEO Ron Williams took home over $24 million in compensation last year, the largest compensation of the top 10 health insurers’ combined $85.5 million. That’s your premium money at work. Did you know they also categorize any claims paid on your behalf as losses? That’s right, your care impairs their profits.

But don’t feel bad. The largest 10 for-profit health insurers still made $12.9 billion in profits in 2007. That’s a 428% increase since 2000.

There are also 6 healthcare lobbyists for every lawmaker in Washington, and so far $263 million has been spent on healthcare lobbying in 2009. All together that’s an awful lot of money that’s NOT being spent on your healthcare.

Take Action To Keep Your Benefits

So while there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to ensure things DO remain the same for entrenched special interests, your interests are not among them. If you like your healthcare benefits and want to keep them, it’s time to hop on the healthcare reform bandwagon.

To keep the status quo, we need change.

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