Job downsizing, plant closings, strikes, or termination by an insurance carrier can all result in adding you to the ranks of the medically uninsured. Now add in the people who are working for a small company that offers no insurance benefits and the ranks swell even higher especially when you realize that the average family of five must make $50,000 a year to make just health insurance affordable and even that doesn’t include deductibles or other costs. Given that figure, many Americans fall into the gap between the federal government’s definition of poverty where they will help pay for medical attention and those who can actually afford to purchase their own insurance.

Sadly, however, this is not just a consumer problem it is also an affordability problem that affects small businesses who cannot afford to insure their employees and big companies who are actually paying out more on medical insurance than they do on the raw materials needed to manufacture their product. As one looks by this scenario, it is obvious that providing health care for employees and retirees is bankrupting the economy and is not sustainable. One can also see that this is a problem for the government as they try to pick up the cost of the uninsured and the underinsured without the means to do it.

So while one of the answers to the crisis may be to stop linking employment to health insurance this creates another problem that is already being seen in small medical clinics where patients with no insurance but who are at 140 percent of the federal poverty level or below are seen. These individuals are falling into the gap between government assistance and being able to afford health care coverage. This being the case, why are some businesses deciding to discontinue offering medical insurance to their employees? It appears that the reasons vary but include time, money, expertise and personnel to provide these benefit when business owners often believe that their resources would be better focused on the competencies of the business.

However, while employers struggle with providing these benefits even those with coverage are often denied payment by the insuring companies when they change jobs or insurance carriers due to pre-existing conditions that the companies refuse to cover. Additionally, if you change jobs and the new job pays less than your old one you may find that you simply can no longer afford the cost of your old policy. Of course, this makes for quite a disincentive to work if your medical bills are excessive and you know that the government will pick up these costs if you are unemployed. Lastly, if you get too sick to work you can also lose your coverage when you lose your job making it impossible for you to pay for your medical care.

One must realize, however, that health care decisions are different than decisions to purchase a product in that you have to have a diagnosis in health related issues before you can make a rational decision on how to proceed. Given that, if you were to avoid seeing the doctor for a diagnosis due to financial concerns you may find that you have chosen the cheapest medical outcome – death – if your problem were turn out to be a heart attack or a leaking abdominal aneurysm.

Since America already has one of the highest levels of patient cost sharing in the industrialized world, and our per capita costs exceed those of other nations it is time for America as a nation to work to bring costs under control. To do this the primary goal of health care must change from our current market-driven system that only cares about profits to a real reform that rids the system of its inefficiencies and waste. Once this is accomplished, costs can stabilize and the number of those uninsured individuals will hopefully: decline.

[tags]American Healthcare, Healthcare system broken, uninsured, underinsured, employee sponsored insurance, Medical insurance,government health care coverage, preexisting conditions, health care profits[/tags]