The number of Americans who lack health care coverage is at an all-time high—46.6 million people. This is approximately 16 percent of the population. Nearly all the uninsured are workers or working-class families.
Employers like Wal-Mart claim they provide full and comprehensive health care options to employees. But this is not
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When employer-paid health care coverage costs too much or when employers don’t provide it, workers are faced with two options—try to purchase private health insurance or live without health care coverage altogether.
A new study released by the Commonwealth Fund on Sept. 14 reports that 9 out of 10 people in the United States who attempted to buy health insurance were unable to do so. Living costs, including health care insurance, are continuing to rise, while wages are not keeping up. On average, health insurance costs for workers increased by 9.2 percent in 2005, far outpacing the 2.7 percent growth in wages. (CNN.com, Sept. 14)
Employers not offering affordable health care
Fewer and fewer employers are offering health insurance to workers. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, approximately 69 percent offered health care coverage to their employees in 2000. This dropped to 63 percent in 2003 and 60 percent in 2005.
Those that offer coverage are requiring higher employee-paid deductibles—the amount of medical expenses workers must pay until their health plan coverage kicks-in—and higher “co-pays”—the amount workers pay for each medical visit and procedure.
Employment-based health insurance premiums are also skyrocketing. Since 2000, they have increased 73 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 14 percent and cumulative wage growth of 15 percent during the same period.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States have been rising five times faster on average than workers’ earnings since 2000.
As health care costs increase, capitalist bosses make sure that workers shoulder the cost of these increases. Over the past few years, in industries where labor contracts have been renegotiated, workers have been forced to make wage and other concessions to hold onto health care benefits.
Companies also have been trying to reduce or eliminate health care benefits for retirees. Often these benefits are enshrined in hard-won labor contracts.
Until recently, employers generally were barred by law from altering unionized retirees’ benefits unless it was negotiated as a future concession at the bargaining table. But this is changing. Bosses have sued union retirees across the country in attempts to cut health care and other benefits. They ask judges to rule that no matter what specific labor contracts say, bosses have a right to alter or eliminate benefits.
Some have argued that contract references to “lifetime coverage” do not apply to the length of workers’ lives, but to the “lifetime” of the labor contract. They claim that since the contracts of retired workers have expired, the benefits promised in their contracts also have expired.
Capitalist system at fault
Although there are many factors contributing to rising health care costs—high-priced pharmaceuticals, more high-tech medical procedures, more elderly people who need greater medical care—the real source of the U.S health care crisis is capitalism.
In the capitalist system, health care is a commodity, like food, education, housing and so on. The need for health care is not seen as a basic human right, but rather as a source of profit for the owning class.
The capitalist health care industry is run by giant corporations that make hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in profits each year. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies are all driven by the need to increase profits.
As long as health care is viewed as a commodity to be exploited for profit, the crisis will continue and get worse. Only a system that sees health care as a basic human right can provide a solution to the health care crisis.
