Healthcare's Final Battle: The Empire versus The Rebel Alliance
We may finally have reached a tipping point to begin restoring sanity to our healthcare system:
Amazon, Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase are forming a new company to address the health care costs of their employees, sending shares of health care...
If Not Now, When?
It's that time of year again – the annual KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey reports that average premiums for employer-sponsored health plans increased to $18,764 for families and $6,690 for individuals:
Waiting for a Raise
![Pompeii Resident [(c) William Lawson]](https://ehop-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/article/picture/b40ab74d-f28d-475c-ad28-076077daf07c/pompeii-resident%40800w-3eec1648_large.jpg)
Rising healthcare costs need to be understood as the most important financial issue affecting the middle class. This slow, inexorable squeeze and subsequent pressure on jobs and income must be released. The St. Louis Fed helpfully illustrates the volcanic...
Leaving the Death Spiral
![By Alain R [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://ehop-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/article/picture/022934db-4b37-4039-8bc2-b56422031ace/black-hole-ab141047_large.png)
According to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini:
Obamacare is in a "death spiral" and more insurers will flee in 2018. There isn't enough money in the ACA today as it is structured – even with its fees and taxes – to support the population that needs to be served.
Hearing that there's "not enough money" in the Affordable Care Act may come as a surprise to individuals and businesses that have watched their premiums increase over the past few years. Is there another option?
Opting Out?
When your employer offers you health care insurance, one of your options is to simply not sign up. Millions of Americans have made that choice, even as the Affordable Care Act has been fully implemented. Why?
In 1988, the average individual health...
Tilting at Windmills
![By Gustave Dore [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://ehop-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/article/picture/63043e3f-52a7-4e71-9d3c-55241c2f742b/Don_Quijote_Illustration_by_Gustave_Dore_VII-5467f382_large.jpg)
Waiting for a delayed flight in Chicago's O'Hare Airport, I decided to walk the concourses. Challenging myself to do two things at once, I began to think. And that is when I ran smack dab into a quandary: why are we trying to change the world of health insurance for employers? Not even Don Quixote would be so foolish, would he?
Perhaps the three most powerful lobbying groups in the US are the insurance industry, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. Taking on one of these giants, much less all three simultaneously, would seem to fall into the "insane" category. Particularly for a small group of individuals with relatively light pockets and no groundswell of support from the very people they are trying to help. Yet someone has to try to do something to slow the cost curve growth that employers all across the country are facing, don't they?