Originally published December 3 2005
Critics examine the consequences of healthcare plans
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
With the replacement of cover-all healthcare packages being replaced by narrower options, many fear that families will be left uncovered by consumer-driven plans selected on the basis of predictions about a person's future health.
Instead of the old-style single plan that covered everyone in the company, firms are offering choices that splinter employees into ever-smaller groups.
It's part of a movement that emphasizes personal responsibility for staying healthy and spending wisely for care.
But as people are asked to pick a plan based on their predicted health costs, some worry that the purpose of insurance -- to protect against the unpredictable -- is getting lost.
Just as in the old days -- when the goal was to spread risk over as many people as possible -- many still bundle all their new employee groups into one big pool, by self-insuring or by hiring one insurer to handle all their plans.
At Fairview, one union representing 1,700 employees -- including pharmacists, nurse's aides, and food service and housekeeping workers -- complained that the plans disproportionately shift costs to sick employees and those with larger families.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 113 repeated a common, and controversial, complaint that the new consumer-driven health plans collect only the healthiest and wealthiest employees because they are set up with high, up-front deductibles.
The plans do that, they said, essentially by backloading the costs so that the healthy get next year's lower premiums, but the sick get next year's higher out-of-pocket maximums -- deductibles, co-payments and other costs that the plans don't pick up.
"We had feedback that employees would like premiums for only the number of people they covered, not just from singles but some employees with dependents, too," Diane Iorfida said.
Toring, a single mother with two preschool sons, said she calculated that keeping the same coverage next year wouldn't raise her $3,000 annual premium.
One SEIU complaint is that for the first time next year, premiums will go up per dependent, said Holly Rodin, SEIU's senior health systems researcher.
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