Want 30% Savings for Healthcare Costs? Here's How
More and more companies are putting health care clinics in the workplace. That can mean big savings. Some studies show businesses can cut health care costs by up to 30%.
~National Public Radio
MP: More than 1,000 companies, like Rockwell Aviation (featured in the NPR story), offer on-site health care clinics, and they are expected to serve 10-15% of the working population within the next few years. So while President Obama and politicians in Washington dream up the latest grandiose government health care reform to address rising healthcare costs, the most effective, affordable and convenient healthcare solutions might be right on location at your workplace health care clinic.
6 Comments:
This is simply another sign of how messed up health care is in this country. Why are companies responsible for employee health care?
Note that this is not an argument for government-run care.
Colin,
In this case it's in the company's self-interest and to the workers' benefit also. If they don't have to use sick time to see a doctor or nurse for a minor complaint, there is less time off. It's the same reason many companies have subsidized cafeterias and free coffee - to keep people at work.
I hear what you're saying about the message it sends. After some companies offered voluntarily offered health benefits as a perquisite, liberals got the warped idea that employers can and should all pay for health insurance.
We have a liberal problem, not a free market problem.
"We have a liberal problem, not a free market problem"...
President Nixon appeased the left and proposed the HMO Act, which Congress passed in 1973. The law created new, supposedly cheaper health coverage with millions of dollars to HMOs, which, until then, constituted a small portion of the market. Kaiser Permanente was the only major HMO in the country by 1969 and most of its members were compelled to join through unions...
@1
I don't doubt that what the article states is true, but when I selected Kaiser HMO in 1992, there was another HMO available - I can't remember the name. I could also have chosen a PPO, but it was more expensive.
I got quality care from Kaiser and, in fact, everyone I worked with selected them. Since that time I've heard nothing but bad things about them but it's all second-hand. My wife's grandmother spent her career working with Kaiser and still uses their health care.
The HMO experiment may have been a collosal failure, but the cost-saving approaches have probably been adopted my many "medical groups" throughout the nation.
The only places where I ever had reason to question the quality of care I received were:
Univ. of Illinois Health Clinic
Military Medical Facilities
The Veterans Administration
all "government run" clinics and hospitals with universal access for program participants and little to no co-pays.
"I selected Kaiser HMO in 1992, there was another HMO available - I can't remember the name"...
Well Robert Miller back in '92 I had a choice of three different HMOs though none of them were Kaiser...
I've had MetLife, UHC, and Aetna...
I've heard both good and bad about Kaiser and ALL the rest of them...
Right now I've got MetLife and I've not had a complaint about them or the other two and in fact I would say that my few times that I needed to use the serivices (which I pay for in part) its always been outstanding and on time...
I like to think that the good service I got was due in part to the fact that I could make a choice in which service I went with...
"The HMO experiment may have been a collosal failure, but the cost-saving approaches have probably been adopted my many "medical groups" throughout the nation"...
I think this gent might be of interest to you: Articles by Richard Parker M.D.
"Univ. of Illinois Health Clinic
Military Medical Facilities
The Veterans Administration"...
Well the only outfit on that list of less than outstanding medical service providers that I have had any experience with (due to a friend of mine) was the V.A. and that was a serious nightmare...
Are all the V.A. hospitals like that?
The only I dealt with was the one in San Antonio, the Audie L. Murphy Veterans Hospital...
That was almost thirty years ago though...
Regarding Micahel Moore, Richard Ralston noted in his critique of the movie Sicko is the following: Michael Moore forgets to tell the whole story...
Somehow I knew that Robert Miller would defend this...
I don't have an issue with this per say, but it is a symptom of the disease.
While I'm glad to see employers try to lower their Healthcare/Healthcare insurance expenses, a majority of employers and businesses have absolutely no business doing this. But they have no alternative. The end result of this will be employers rationing Healthcare instead of the government. It doesn't resolve the issues.
Robert: We do have a free market problem in that we don't have one in the Healthcare system.
Comparing employers offering free coffee to offering free doctors visits is not the same thing. A reasonable analogy to that perk (pun intended) would be offering a place to work out on site...
The majority of businesses don't offer home landscaping packages, groceries, clothes, or free car repair. The only reason that they are offering these services is because the system is broke.
Busting up the AMA union, getting government's hands out of the Healthcare system, AND eliminating the favorable tax treatment that employers get to provide Healthcare insurance would go a long way to solving our problems...
Having on-site Healthcare facilities is a nice try, but it is not optimal; it's a workaround at best. It's people trying to find an answer outside the system, because the system is broken...
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