Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl
Actually, total health insurance costs have not gone up as much as you perceive (although they are rising faster than inflation).
What is going up fast is YOUR portion of the cost.
Employers are shifting costs to employees, through higher employee share of premiums and (especially) through high deductibles.
This has nothing to do with the ACA. It is just another way that, overall, business (companies) are gaining ground while labor (employees) are not. In addition to holding wages stagnant for years, companies are saving money on benefits like healthcare insurance.
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I appreciate the thoughtful post and I admit I'm guilty of a bit of speculation here with regards to the root causes of what appears on the surface to be an ever increasing burden on working people - me included. Yes I've seen my deductable go up a lot and the premiums go up some. I'm lucky they haven't gone up by as much as I've seen some others' go up.
I agree that there seems to be a growing disparity between "have" and "have not" which seems to correlate to "company" and "human being" more often than not.
Delving into your observation a bit more let's consider why companies are doing well why individuals are not - perhaps this is a result of less entrepreneurship (?) People assuming they can't compete against the behemoths out there? Maybe in some industries. In others it seems like "go into business, succeed and then sell off for a huge profit to a competitor" as a model is still alive and well (software, electronic doodads, financial institutions, etc.)
So is it simple greed? If so, why wasn't it this way previously (or was it?) Perhaps businesses are hoarding money miserly because they're still scared from the last 5-6 years? I suspect they might be scared of the thing businesses are MOST scared of historically and that's uncertainty. Uncertainty about political direction, tax policy, national unity, pretty much you name it... There seems to be a lot of that going around and I can see (and yes, speculate) that it's a major driver for businesses wanting to run as lean as possible - even to the point of what most would consider screwing over their "most valuable resources" for a few extra bucks in the jar.
I do not think the ACA is going to prove to be helpful to more than a lucky few however... But I'll defer that to a separate discussion.