Re-Tired

Healthcare costs have moderated of late, but big annual increases still outpace inflation. The United States is far and away the most expensive per capita healthcare system in the world, and all attempts to create low-cost competition to our medical vendors (e.g., hospitals, pharmas, etc.) have been shattered by well paid lobbyists with campaign contributions in hand. The pharma lobby shot down the prospect of Americans’ being able to buy cheaper drugs from places like Canada or the U.K., citing an exceptionally dubious “quality control” issue. Congress itself eviscerated any attempt to place a low cost “bare bones” government sponsored insurance alternative when the Affordable Care was originally passed.

Major pieces have been published in all sorts of periodicals (including these blogs) about the huge and disparate charges for the same medical procedures depending on what part of the country and which hospital you investigate… and virtually all procedures costing more than even countries with much high general costs of living beyond what it costs to live in the United States. With a new emphasis on part-time and contractor labor – where no healthcare benefits attach – the need for individuals to access medical pools to secure health insurance is mission critical.

To make matters worse, that “normal adjustment” after-the-fact legislation that has “fixed” obvious flaws in every piece of seminal legislation passes by Congress in the hundred years is impossible in a gridlocked Congress where total repeal is the only alternative offered. Many states have taken the Supreme Court decision to heart, have refused to expand Medicaid and have also elected not to create their own healthcare exchanges that have actually cut overall costs in states like New York that decided to play ball with the new law.

In short, our healthcare system remains a mess, expensive, inefficient with still too many people on the outside looking in. And with healthcare costs being an added cost to our export capacity, we are less competitive than nations where they have got that cost thang under control with much more state involvement in providing these basic benefits.

With a few (likely to become many) high profile retirement systems beginning to elect to terminate providing health insurance to both their regular and Medicare-aged retirees, instead opting to pay for such retirees to access one of these new healthcare exchanges for their excess coverage, there is a big experiment in the offing. While these exchanges might not provide coverage as rich as the systems being terminated, what is available should not work a material lifestyle change on those charged under this new system. IBM and Time Warner have led the way. Litigation against these companies is already starting, but the “experiment” might actually work.

No accurate numbers exist as to how many companies provide retirement healthcare benefits, and the percentage of such companies range from about a quarter to half of such employers. But the exchanges are there, federally-created where states won’t participate, and they allow a much bigger pooling system to create competition to lower costs.

Will this concept work? It really depends on the level of overall enrollment in the healthcare insurance system by everyone… and all eyes are turning toward younger workers who have traditionally not valued such insurance feeling that invulnerability of youth. The Affordable Care Act requires that participation, but the Tea Party/GOP mantra is to fight the system at every turn. If the Act can generate that level of participation, it is very likely that this “experiment” might just work.

And if big business can save billions with this new system, the GOP may find that their biggest donor pool and yet one more reason to withdraw needed campaign contributions to conservative representatives who no longer even think but just knee-jerk react to Obamacare. Time to reassess what’s best for most Americans… and fix what needs to be fixed in the Act without the rolling and constant threat of repeal as the only choice.

I’m Peter Dekom, and spending billions on false slogans can become a very difficult task to “undo.”