Health Insurance Plan. Either do it on your own or sign up with your employer

Employer-based health insurance declined from covering 179.4 million Americans in 2000 to 177.2 million in 2006, while the insured percentage of the population under age 65 decreased from 68.3% to 62.9%. From 2000 to 2007, the percentage of companies offering health benefits declined by an alarming 15%, from 69% to 60%.

The natural culprit behind these falling trends is the cost of healthcare, which continues to rise at astonishing rates. Middle-class incomes, however, have actually declined in recent years, with the gap between the rich and poor widening to proportions not seen since the Depression. The sad truth is that despite its status as the wealthiest nation on earth, the United States operates like a struggling nation in crisis when it comes to healthcare.


Though bleak, the situation has met with renewed interest (largely due to the upcoming election and all of its attendant candidate promises) which has compelled employers to invest more of their intellectual and economic resources in providing healthcare to their employees. Some have gone as far as providing onsite medical clinics which not only treat symptoms but also teach employees how to practice preventive medicine. An increasing number of companies are also beginning to invest in fitness centers and wellness programs. Most employers are motivated by the simple fact that healthy employees make for productive employees, with a full half of surveyed employers reporting that insurance coverage helps reduce employee absences.

In Europe, where most nations provide universal healthcare based on the assumption that health is a "human right," employers in the UK have started offering their own private insurance to help retain high-level employees, who are in very short supply. The UK system has been bogged down not by funding issues but by dissatisfaction among citizens who have to wait months to see specialists.

Many experts have pointed to the rather inconvenient reality that the best solution for the current crisis is for American workers to insure themselves and find their own plans partly supplemented by their employers. This isn't feasible for everyone, and it definitely won't solve the crisis, but it may provide a temporary bandage for the problem before the real hemorrhaging begins.

Public sentiment against insurance companies has transitioned in the past several years from distrust to outright revulsion with the plethora of denied claims and bad publicity. Certainly, health trends are expected to decline in the wake of the obesity epidemic, which will bring new challenges to future generations of patients and health professionals. Thus, the shift will be from expected health coverage to preventive measures taken to ensure that medical coverage will not be needed — a sad but evident commentary on the current state of the system.

The full CED report, Moving Beyond the Employer-Based Health-Insurance System, can be read at www.ced.org/docs/report/report_healthcare200710.pdf.