Business Groups Plead for Health-Care Support : Workplace: The skyrocketing cost of employee benefits prompts four associations to ask Congress for help. Their appeal is a reversal of past stands on the issue.
Four powerful business groups, admitting that “we are losing the . . . battle to make available quality health care at reasonable cost” to workers, pleaded for help Monday from Congress.
The urgent tone of the appeal marked a sharp reversal of business’s traditional antipathy to government involvement in health-care issues. Frightened by medical-care costs that are rising at twice the rate of inflation, powerful segments of the business community seem willing to consider government controls that might have been unthinkable a few years ago.
Cooperation between business and government “is essential if we wish to retain the vitality of our current health-care system and yet be economically competitive in the future,” said a letter that was sent to every member of Congress. It was issued by the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors.
The groups represent a broad range of employers, from giant manufacturing companies to tiny “mom-and-pop” stores.
Business spent $162.5 billion last year for their workers’ group health insurance and for Medicare’s share of the payroll tax, according to the manufacturer’s group. Spending has climbed 31% since 1985, outpacing the 21% growth in the nation’s production of goods and services.
“America’s health-care system is considered by many to be the best in the world, yet its cost threatens to undermine its viability,” the business groups said in their letter.
“Effectively managing health-care inflation is a top priority of the business community--a concern expressed in various corporate surveys and national polls,” the letter said.
The groups made no specific proposals. Instead, their letter seemed to concede that business is finding it impossible to control spending for health care and wants government help.
Many companies have been trying to control growth in health-care outlays by shifting costs to their employees. Some have increased the deductible that their workers must pay before insurance coverage begins; others have required workers to pay more of the monthly insurance premium.
Some workers have rebelled. In the bitter strike by miners at Pittston Coal in Virginia, a key issue is the withdrawal of some health benefits for retired miners. The recent strike at various telephone companies involved an unsuccessful management proposal that workers pay more for their health-care benefits.
Employers have also sought to cut costs by paying a fixed fee to health maintenance organizations for the yearly health care of their workers. But HMOs have failed to deliver the promised savings, the business groups said.
The country needs to improve “health-care quality while controlling its cost, and phasing in access for the uninsured,” the groups said in their letter to Congress.
“We are striving toward this goal and earnestly require your help in this most difficult task. Such cooperation is essential if we wish to retain the validity of our current health-care system and yet be economically competitive in the future.”
NAM President-elect Jerry J. Jasinowski said Monday that “the major business groups agree on the need to improve quality, reduce health-care costs, expand access on a phased basis, make data on health-care providers publicly available and evaluate the safety and effectiveness of new medical technologies.”
The letter “represents nearly the entire gamut of American business,” Jasinowski said. “I can’t think of many issues such a diverse group can agree on. But controlling health costs . . . has business speaking in one voice.”
The United States spends about $600 billion a year on health care. That represents 11.2% of the nation’s economic output, or about twice the spending rate in the other major industrialized nations.
