|
|
|
The Health Insurance Time Bomb
|
Business New Haven
9/29/2003
By: BNH
|
As Karen Singer explains in her page 24 story on spiraling health-insurance costs, companies and state officials have at last taken aim at the 800-pound gorilla of business costs in Connecticut.
Unfortunately, the strategy of most companies to cope with insurance cost hikes has been to reduce or eliminate benefits. That tactic is a ticking time bomb that will ultimately disadvantage state companies in their quest to hire from among the best of a highly mobile workforce.
Meanwhile, the root cause of the cost spiral goes untreated — age-based rating, which drastically penalizes companies that hire any but the very youngest workers.
When insurance costs were based on so-called community rating, premiums bore a direct relationship to the health of the covered population, large or small.
Age-based rating not only places older workers at a competitive disadvantage, it is fundamentally unfair in that older employees in effect subsidize younger co-workers who may engage in unhealthy behaviors such as smoking or eating disorders.
In forcing the transition from community to age rating, state regulators assured that workers could not be discriminated against due to their health history. That was a noble aim to increase insurability— but the cure, many believe, was worse than the disease.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
