Monday, March 19, 2012

Shrinking Health Coverage

I've been a part of the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan since the 1970s. And for the past decade-plus I've watched MPI insurance get more costly and less comprehensive year .. by year ... by year. Which isn't to say the insruance is bad, just ... less.

But participants in the MPIHP aren't the only ones who have been eating it:

The share of children and working-age adults who had insurance through an employer fell 10 percentage points during the last recession, according to a study released on Thursday by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

From 2007 to 2010, the share of children and working-age adults with employer-sponsored coverage fell to 53.5 percent from 63.6 percent, according to the study. ...

Employer-anchored health coverage started during World War II, got enshrined in law by President Eisenhower and a Republican Congress in 1953, and is now (pretty much) a shadow of its original self.

During the oncoming week, the IA and the AMPTP will arm-wrestle over who gets MPI Health coverage, who pays for it, and how extensive the coverage will be over the next three-year contract cycle.

Fun times.

I'm guessing, in a half-educated way, that participants will be doing premiums for the first time, the Plan's health offerings will be a bit skimpier, and that most people will learn (somehow) to live with it.

For as national trends go, so go we.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently did an overview of health insurance across the globe - Global Lessons: The GPS Roadmap for Saving Health Care. It does a great job of looking beyond the politics in the United States and how we can actually solve this. We have to stop listening to the propaganda on both sides.

Steve Hulett said...

Every other industrialized country has "issues" with its health care, but most of them have lower costs and better results than we do.

The stats are easy to google. You can always find horrific anecdotal evidence, but if you look at global costs/results, the U.S. of A. is not doing real well with health care.

But we do have "Best health care in the WORLD" for a chosen few. Maybe. Good luck trying to find that in the statistics.

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