It's Not Employer Coverage - It's Coverage By Big Insurance Companies..... [View all]

[global1]

that just so happens to be contracted with by companies (employers) to be used as a so called benefit for their employees.

It costs the company money to offer this as a benefit and the trend has been that it has become a shared cost by the company and the employee to continue to maintain this benefit.

At one time - such health insurance cost was covered completely by the company - but due to rising pricing by the private insurance companies - such employer plans have gotten more expensive and the company has constantly had to re-negotiate the plan with lesser coverage to maintain it or have the employee share more in the cost for the plan for the same coverage.

Employers have to have someone(s) in their company to be the point person(s) to work with private insurance companies to continue to provide this benefit. This becomes a burden for the company - to analyze plans and their conditions. The private insurance companies are always modifying their plans with these employers.

The Private Insurance Companies want more money (increase the price) to offer the same plan or in order to maintain the same dollar outlay by the company they reduce the plan coverage to the employee to be able to allow the company to maintain its same cost for offering the benefit. For the employer/company - managing this benefit becomes a burden.

I sometimes wonder why employers even want to mess with this constant game played by the private insurance companies of rising prices and/or reduced plan coverage. It seems that they would save money by not having to deal with this constant game with private insurance companies. It frees up that money that these employers have to use on providing a health benefit and allows them to perhaps give a raise of pay of their employees or offer different and maybe better benefits to their employees (i.e., more vacation, etc).

Interesting thing is if an employee leaves the company - they lose their health insurance and are left to fend for themselves or hope they get another job that offers health insurance as an employee benefit.

Yeah - a Medicare For All plan is a plan managed by the government and not a private insurance company. It is not employer coverage - because every U.S. citizen would be covered by such a plan. Said citizen would not have to worry about health coverage if they leave their job. They would maintain their coverage leaving them the freedom to take a job anywhere and not becoming a prisoner to their present job because they have to have health insurance.

Instead of having money come from their paycheck to pay for such coverage - they would be covered because they are a taxpayer and the same dollar amount or less (a portion of their taxes) would be used to allow them to have this Medicare For All coverage. All taxpaying Americans would be paying into such system. The biggest pool possible. No need for penalties for not having coverage. It would be automatic.

Realize that the bad guys in all this are the Private Insurance Companies (Corporations). These are the same corporations that are 'for profit' and whose main concern is minimizing coverage; denying coverage and reducing plan benefits so that from year to year these companies can make even more profit.

The goal is to free us from the clutches of these For Profit Private Insurance Companies.

Certainly there is more to this than I was able to post here but I thought this would be a start for this conversation. ACA was a wonderful initial attempt to move in the direction of a 'medicare for all' plan. It was a compromise plan and a plan that the Repugs continually decimated in favor of the corporate private insurance industry.

I believe now we are in a position to move to the next step and the ultimate step - a medicare for all system.

Removing the duplicate administrations of the myriad of private insurance companies for one plan administrator will alone go a long way to pay for a medicare for all system. It will remove that 'for profit' motivation from such insurance - where every year these private insurance companies have to bank more money than the year before for their stockholders and upper echelon of company management.