Expression GreenExpressing the need for a healthy green lifestyle

With sev­eral health care reform bills mak­ing their way through con­gres­sional com­mit­tees, many Val­ley employ­ers are wor­ried how the out­come will affect their finan­cial future.

Already fac­ing increased health insur­ance pre­mi­ums, busi­nesses also are con­cerned about being required to pro­vide health cov­er­age for all work­ers and how a government-run option might affect their costs. One pro­posal that has ben­e­fits con­sul­tants wring­ing their hands is an excise tax on insur­ance plans that cost a fam­ily more than $21,000 a year.

Kathryn Bakich, national direc­tor of health care com­pli­ance at the Segal Co. in Wash­ing­ton, said law­mak­ers must be care­ful not to do some­thing that will cre­ate bad con­se­quences for employer plans.

Most plans cost $15,000 to $18,000 a year, she said, includ­ing both the employer and employee por­tions. With a cou­ple of years of infla­tion, some of those plans will hit the $21,000 cap and be open to addi­tional taxes on employers.

“Many times they call it a Cadil­lac tax, but these are not Cadil­lac plans they are tax­ing,” Bakich said. “That’s a big problem.”

She said she hasn’t seen any con­sen­sus from employ­ers about which plans seem to be most employer-friendly. She said some employer groups don’t like any of the pro­pos­als, while oth­ers might like a sin­gle aspect of a com­plex plan.

“Every­one is look­ing to see what the Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee comes up with, which will com­bine with the Sen­ate Health Com­mit­tee bill,” she said.
Employer-based cov­er­age

Den­nis Hoff­man, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at the W.P. Carey School of Busi­ness at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity, said the U.S. is one of the only coun­tries that relies on employ­ers to pro­vide the bulk of health insur­ance. That prac­tice orig­i­nated after World War II, when the gov­ern­ment imposed wage and price con­trols on com­pa­nies. As a result, employ­ers — begin­ning with the auto indus­try — offered health ben­e­fits to entice high-quality employees.

“In terms of basic eco­nom­ics, the labor mar­ket would be much more effi­cient if peo­ple were free to seek jobs and they could sep­a­rate insur­ance cov­er­age from employ­ment,” Hoff­man said. “Busi­nesses could feel free to hire and fire peo­ple with­out con­cerns about insur­ance impli­ca­tions, pre-existing con­di­tions and law­suits around health insurance.”

Hoff­man, who receives com­pre­hen­sive ben­e­fits from the state, said he is sat­is­fied with his cov­er­age. The state of Ari­zona recently awarded $750 mil­lion in con­tracts to sev­eral health plans, all of which com­pete to sign up an esti­mated 135,000 mem­bers. Hoff­man chose the Boise, Idaho-based AmeriBen plan, which is using the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Ari­zona provider network.

“I don’t have any com­plaints about my par­tic­u­lar ben­e­fits pack­age per se, but it still does cost the state and myself a lot of money,” he said.

Hoff­man would rather have the state exclude health ben­e­fits and put that money in his pay­check so he can buy his own health coverage.

Jack Lunsford, pres­i­dent and CEO of West­marc, a West Val­ley eco­nomic devel­op­ment coali­tion, said a gov­ern­ment plan could destroy the employer-based cov­er­age sys­tem that works for many Amer­i­cans. Yet he also said a tax on small busi­nesses for not offer­ing insur­ance to employ­ees would hurt them.

Lunsford is grate­ful for Westmarc’s cov­er­age through Health Care Group, which pro­vides a safety net for small busi­nesses that have trou­ble find­ing afford­able health plans in the com­mer­cial sector.

“We were not able to offer health insur­ance to our staff until we qual­i­fied under Health Care Group,” Lunsford said.
Busi­nesses fear mandates

Employ­ers such as Mar­wan Madanat, who hire inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors and don’t pro­vide health insur­ance, say an employer man­date would be “dev­as­tat­ing” to his com­pany, Alphamed Solu­tions Inc. in Chandler.

Alphamed has four work­ers in Ari­zona and 16 across the U.S. who pro­vide med­ical tran­scrip­tion and billing ser­vices for doc­tors’ offices. All are home-based inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors, which means they are respon­si­ble for their own insurance.

Madanat hopes to expand his busi­ness into the grow­ing elec­tronic med­ical records seg­ment, which many say ulti­mately will help lower med­ical costs.

“In my opin­ion, we have got the best med­ical treat­ment in the whole world,” said Madanat, who was born in Jor­dan and became a U.S. cit­i­zen in 1994. “This is where I’m com­ing in with the tech­nol­ogy. At the end of the day, we can help reduce the cost of pro­vid­ing ser­vices and hope the doc­tor will reduce their fees. This would have a rip­ple effect.”

Scott Harkey, a part­ner in Phoenix-based mar­ket­ing firm Owens Harkey & Asso­ciates, said he recently had to cut health insur­ance ben­e­fits for five full-time and four part-time employees.