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Health insurance crisis has our backs against the wall
Quick Notes: Trends & Talk About Town
By Dennis Quick
I realize the word “crisis” gets tossed around as easily as a bean bag (for the younger generation, kids in my day tossed colorful little bean bags around; we had no Internet to amuse us), but when it comes to health insurance, we’re in a crisis.
Around 45 million Americans are without health insurance. In South Carolina, more than 804,540 residents, or 19% of the population, don’t have it, and 60% of those have-nots are employed.
About 22% of South Carolinians without health insurance have annual household incomes of $50,000 or more.
Most Americans, including South Carolinians, get their health insurance through their employers. However, more employers, especially small businesses, are finding health insurance too expensive to provide. Only 32% of the state’s 104,680 small businesses offer health insurance to their employees.
All of this is scary. It is an indication of how far our national standard of living has sunk when people who have jobs and pay mortgages cannot afford health care for themselves and their families.
What to do?
The S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center, S.C. Association of Nonprofit Organizations, S.C. Fair Share and S.C. Small Business Chamber of Commerce prescribed possible antidotes to our ailing health care condition during an October forum at the Charleston County Library.
Fair Share’s John C. Rouff recommended that businesses consider participating in the state’s employee health plan, the largest health insurance pool in South Carolina. The larger and more diverse the pool, the lower the health insurance costs for individuals and businesses.
Small Business Chamber of Commerce President Frank Knapp Jr. and Lathran J. Woodard, executive director of S.C. Primary Health Care Association, pitched community health centers. CHCs are community-owned, nonprofit businesses providing affordable primary and preventive health care. Small businesses should consider making arrangements with CHCs, according to Knapp and Woodward.
Sue Berkowitz, an attorney with Appleseed Legal Justice Center, argued that Medicaid coverage ought to be expanded to those who are not poor and disabled.
I don’t know which solution is best. We might have to try a combination of solutions and keep coming up with new ones.
Let’s hope more ideas arise from the numerous health care conferences—the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce held one Oct. 27 with South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford as the keynote speaker—that will inundate us until the crisis somehow abates.
Optimists like to say that “crisis” is another word for “opportunity,” and they’re right. If your back is against the wall and the henchman is coming straight at you, you have the perfect opportunity to get creative about your survival.
Businesses are being forced to get creative about health care coverage.
That businesses find themselves in this fix is one more reminder that the good ol’ paternalistic company has pretty much died and disintegrated, much like the dinosaur.
I’ve written before about my younger years at Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y., but please bear with me as I limp once again down memory lane.
When I worked at Kodak in the early 1980s, we Kodakers (and thus a good many Rochesterians) were swaddled in health care coverage.
Whether you needed major surgery, a new contact lens or a crown for your tooth, you got it without having your wallet bled dry. Ditto for your immediate family members. Physicals? Kodak performed them on site. If suddenly you felt ill, you went to the infirmary, and every Kodak plant had one staffed with a couple of nurses.
George Eastman thought a company that takes care of its employees has healthier, more productive and more loyal employees.
He was right, especially about the loyalty part. As a restless 20-something, I’d pick up the Kodakery newsletter and gawk at the list of the company’s latest retirees, many of whom served 40, even 50, years with Eastman Kodak.
Of course, Eastman’s concept of the American company is as obsolete as the Brownie camera. Taking that much care of your employees (and keeping jobs here rather than shipping them overseas) proved awfully expensive for many companies, especially in this more globally competitive world.
Throw soaring costs of pharmaceuticals, managed care programs and skyrocketing malpractice insurance in the mix and you’ve got a costly health care brew business owners can’t afford and find rather insipid to boot.
A good part of me longs for those long-ago Kodak health care days. The cold hard fact is those days are history, dead as Eastman himself.
Still, it’s sad that, today, “don’t get sick” is the best health care policy many American businesses can offer their employees.
Dennis Quick is the senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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