AARP Bulletin - "Rising Health Care Costs Mean Less Pay, Fewer Raises, Lost Jobs"

[TomCADem]

Another fact that supports the cause for HCR now:

http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourhealth/policy/articles/rising_health_care_costs_mean_less_pay_fewer_raises_lost_jobs.html

The rising costs of the health insurance Richmond buys for his workers substantially restricts his ability to give those workers a raise. “It is a pay cut for my employees,” he says, or a raise they didn’t get.

The sharp spikes in health care costs also make Richmond less likely to hire new workers since offering health care “raises the cost of hiring someone substantially,” he says.

As Congress debates reforms designed to expand insurance coverage and slow the rising cost of health care, business executives and economists say the crippling annual increases in insurance premiums are a silent tax on American workers and the companies that hire them. Today the average premium for employer-sponsored health insurance is $13,375 a year for family coverage, with employers paying nearly 75 percent, or $9,860, according to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“We can’t sustain this broken system,” says Richmond. “I sure hope something happens.”

“All my clients are struggling to deal with this,” says Matt Swinnerton, a broker who sells health care plans to businesses for the Precept Group in San Ramon, Calif. Rising health care costs, he says, are “the silent killer of compensation for employees.”

Permitting premiums to continue to climb unchecked “is simply unsustainable for families, for businesses, for state budgets and for our national economy,” Vice President Joe Biden said in a September speech to state insurance commissioners in the Washington suburbs.

* * *
Premiums rise 131 percent; wages, 38 percent

According to the Kaiser study, health insurance premiums across America have climbed 131 percent since 1999—far more rapidly than workers’ wages, which rose 38 percent, or inflation, which rose 28 percent in the same period.

[Luminous Animal]

1. FYI, AARP operates its own insurance company.

The "Insurance Protection Act" (with the IRS as its enforcer) will be a boon to AARP's investors.

[TomCADem]

3. AARP Has Investors? I Thought AARP Was A Non-Profit

I always thought that AARP was an advocacy group for people 50 and over:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARP

AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, is a United States-based non-governmental organization and interest group. According to its mission statement,<1> it is "a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization for people age 50 and over ... dedicated to enhancing quality of life for all as we age," which "provides a wide range of unique benefits, special products, and services for our members." AARP operates as a non-profit advocate for its members and as one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States, and it also sells insurance, investment funds and other financial products. AARP claims over 35 million members,<2> making it one of the largest membership organizations for people age 50 and over in the United States.

[laughingliberal]

2. They are correct about the rising costs and their effects but the bill really does not bring

the costs down. Nor do I believe the increase in costs is going to slow that much.