Every year at work at a local manufacturer, we heard from a Human Resources spokesperson that the business could no longer afford increasing insurance costs. We would have to pay more. Then one year the CEO, presumably a Republican, explained that government could do nothing more to help the business than to take on the cost of employee insurance. A few years later President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act.
ACA addressed the issue of rising costs in several ways:
- Near universal coverage
- Preventative care
- Spread the risk over the entire population with the “individual mandate.”
The rate of cost increases slowed.
Tom Reed later visited that company. He reported that management asked for lower taxes and decreased regulations. Healthcare wasn’t mentioned in Tom’s report. I have to wonder if company management was no longer concerned with healthcare costs, or did Tom neglect to mention this concern in his report. In my years at work there, I never heard complaints about taxes or regulations significantly impacting the business.
If the individual mandate is repealed, healthcare insurance premiums are expected to jump higher. Evidently, this is what our representative, Tom Reed, wants.
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