Health Policy Program
 

Health Costs Put U.S. Firms at Competitive Disadvantage

A New Report Quantifies the Employer Health Care Burden

May 7, 2008 -- As a percentage of payroll, the employer cost of health benefits has exploded over the past few decades. Employer health costs for manufacturing firms in the United States, $2.38 per worker per hour, were much higher than the foreign trade-weighted average of $0.96 per worker per hour in 2005. Employer health costs make the United States less competitive than it could otherwise be.

A new model for health care that reforms the current insurance marketplace, provides income-based subsidies, and that is individual--rather than employer--based would enable us to finance our 21st-century health system in a more sustainable and competitive way.

For the full text of the policy paper, please click here. A shorter issue brief outlining the employer health care burden is also included here.

About Us

The crisis in America’s health care system stems from three primary causes: spiraling costs; highly uneven quality; and inequitable access to care that leaves 47 million Americans uninsured. The Health Policy Program works at the national level and in California to achieve fully portable health insurance to all Americans while raising the average quality of care and lowering the rate of cost growth. More specifically, the Program promotes a mandatory, citizen-based approach to health insurance that, combined with credible cost containment measures, can ensure universal coverage and enhance America’s long-term economic and social well-being.

A more-detailed program description is available here.

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Nichols Says Bipartisanship, Cost, Coverage, and Quality Critical to Health Reform Debate in Health Affairs

In two new articles released by Health Affairs, New America Health Policy Program Director, Len Nichols, Ph.D., emphasizes the importance of approaching health reform in a bipartisan way and comprehensively addressing the issues of cost, coverage, and quality.

In “The Long Road To Health Reform Requires Bipartisan Leadership,” Nichols and co-authors Christine Ferguson, and Elizabeth Fowler, conclude that a three-pronged strategy that makes health reform a priority, encourages bipartisan leadership, and engages Congress in the legislative details will help ensure efforts to reform our nation’s health system are successful.

Quality improvement, cost containment, and coverage expansion are “intricately woven goals,” according to Nichols and his co-authors in, “Crossroads in Quality: Successful reform must address coverage, costs, and quality at the same time.” Nichols and the Crossroads in Quality Group argue that in order to improve the quality of care that patients receive we need to tie physician payment reform to a broad-base of information about what works and what doesn’t work in our health system.

Free access to both articles is available through the links below.

"The Long Road To Health Reform Requires Bipartisan Leadership" and "Crossroads in Quality"