It’s been thoroughly blogged on this site how certain businesses feel free to dine at the public trough, pushing their employees’ health care costs off on the taxpayers. Remember the Free Care Top 20? And let’s not forget that this is inhumane to those workers, who likely don’t get the preventative care that real health insurance would provide for.
Well, the new report on the top corporate users of the free care pool is out. (Thanks to John McDonough for the steer, and for analysis.) Download the executive summary yourself. Now, with a word of caution that not all ant to know how much this is costing taxpayers? Are you sitting down?
The analysis estimates that $212.6 million of public funds was spent on health care for employees (and their dependents) employed by employers who had 50 or more employees who were receiving services from MassHealth or the UCP [Uncompensated Care Pool].
$212 million is $33.48 for every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth. (I can tell you my four-month old is very unhappy about this.)
Not enough? McDonough says, “… actually if the number included firms with fewer than 50 workers, the total cost would be — take a guess — ten times higher. Who knows, but it’s a good question and $212 million is a low, low estimate of the extent of taxpayer subsidization of health coverage for workers.”
Now, as McDonough points out, not all of this is cut-and-dried freeloading; but how the Senate can contemplate leaving alone this abuse of taxpayers’ good will is beyond me. You want Moral Hazard?? We got it right here.
(By the way, LG candidate Deb Goldberg made a point of how proud she was that Stop & Shop always provided health benefits for its workers. Now, I do not mean to hold her to account for everything the chain does; frankly I have no idea what role she has played in its governance. But Stop & Shop’s position as #2 on the Free Care Freeloaders list simply does not square with her contention that the chain provides adequate health coverage. I’m willing to hear an explanation.)
UPDATE: Patrick Hart answers my question: “Stop and Shop underwent a hostile takeover in the late 1980s and Deb hasn’t been involved in it since then.” Thanks, I’ll take that. See also the Goldberg campaign’s response. –David
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Another thing: McDonough’s also been asking some really inconvenient questions about whether the slow pace of our health care policy sausagemaking in MA is jeopardizing a billion dollars in federal bucks. Do Trav, Sal, and Mitt know something we don’t? They’d better.
are in this table.
Here’s the final paragraph of the summary linked above:
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Particularly important seems to be the fact that, as the summary notes, a surprinsgly large number of employees in firms that do offer health coverage decline it because they don’t want to pay their share of the premiums. Does this answer the Stop & Shop question? Who knows? Also, note that Dunkin Donuts does not appear on the list because of a change in methodology involving franchises.
We could each spend the rest of our lives trying to learn all the details of how wasteful, unfair and shamefully dysfunctional our “health care system” is. If you want to keep doing that (as I spend a lot of time on myself), fine, but I ask you to also take action to help the Health Care Amendment Campaign secure its second needed ConCon vote on May 10, 2006 and then win the statewide vote on the Nov. ballot.
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learn more and take action at http://www.HealthCareForMass.org
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I am a nurse who helped launch this campaign over 3 years ago to establish a constitutional right to “comprehensive, affordable, equitabley financed health insurance coverage for all Massachusetts residents”. I have been moved to dedicate my life to this effort, as have many other citizen activists, largely because of witnessing the tragic needless suffering of those without health insurance coupled with the incredible financial waste inherent in our current “system”.
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The voters of the Commonwealth are in a position to lead the way for our nation as a whole to do the right thing and make health care a guaranteed right for all (and join the rest of the industrialized world). This will follow many years after Mass. was the first state to establish a constitutional right to K-12 public education, authored by John Adams. Please join the Health Care Amendment Campaign now.
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Consider this. Maybe forcing Stop & Shop and companies like them to provide health insurance isn’t the best answer.
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$212 million in health insurance costs are being shirked by companies and are being paid by the public.
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If the companies offer health insurance, the cost will still be paid by the public, just in a different way, likely through slightly higher prices.
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If the public pays them, the revenue can be raised progressively. If the costs are paid via higher prices, this is regressive because a millionaire will pay the same exact dollar amount towards Stop & Shop workers health care as a retiree on a fixed income — assuming that both people eat the same amounts of food.
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Wouldn’t it make sense for the state to collect the cost progressively than for companies to collect the cost regressively?
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That tells me that we should be pushing for universal health care.
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Then again, maybe the ploy to force businesses to pay is really just an attempt to get them to start lobbying the government for universal health care.
“If the companies offer health insurance, the cost will still be paid by the public, just in a different way, likely through slightly higher prices.”
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Only if consumers decide to pay higher prices, or have no other option. That’s possible, but in any event the tax is expressed through consumption, like a sales tax. And MA income taxes aren’t progressive anyway.
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But more to the point, that’s how the world works. Yes, costs get pushed around back and forth, but I don’t see why taxpayers should be helping make certain businesses more competitive by encouraging them to drop benefits for their workers. Perverse incentive.
In terms of the Deb Goldberg/Stop and Shop question, Stop and Shop underwent a hostile takeover in the late 1980s and Deb hasn’t been involved in it since then.