USA TODAY: …It’s a deep and common concern across the USA, where employer plans cover 60% of working-age Americans, or about 150 million people. Coverage long considered the gold standard of health insurance now often requires workers to pay so much out-of-pocket that many feel they must skip doctor visits, put off medical procedures, avoid filling prescriptions and ration pills — much as the uninsured have done.
A recent Commonwealth Fund survey found that four in 10 working-age adults skipped some kind of care because of the cost, and other surveys have found much the same. The portion of workers with annual deductibles — what consumers must pay before insurance kicks in — rose from 55% eight years ago to 80% today, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And a Mercer study showed that 2014 saw the largest one-year increase in enrollment in “high-deductible plans” — from 18% to 23% of all covered employees.
Meanwhile the size of the average deductible more than doubled in eight years, from $584 to $1,217 for individual coverage. Add to this co-pays, co-insurance and the price of drugs or procedures not covered by plans — and it’s all too much for many Americans… (more)
EDITOR: Plans for The Manor Group’s various companies have deductibles ranging from $250 to $500. For a low wage worker such as a hotel room attendant, the company policy is of small if any utility for doctor visits, which is a terrible shame. If they were to sign up under the Affordable Care Act’s Exchange program, they likely would be much better off, if then qualified for subsidies. However, so long as our companies offer health plans, workers who decline it and go to the Exchanges are not entitled to subsidies!
We are giving serious consideration of eliminating company paid health care, paying the money saved to the employees, and letting them cope for themselves We sense that the lower paid workers would be better off. This may not happen for a year or two, but it likely inevitable.
One of the goals of the ACA is, over time, to ultimately eliminate in the current form health care coverage by businesses.
The one draw back is that employees will have to pay taxes on their added income. However, lower paid employees aren’t taxed nearly as much as those in higher brackets.
Only the USA goes this route, and it is a hold over from the time of wage freezes during World War II.
