Companies and employees won’t be able to afford health care

Companies and employees won’t be able to afford health care

EDITOR:

I am astounded that so many people have buried their heads in the sand with regard to health-care reform. The current cost for a company to provide health care to an employee with a family of four is $6.43 per hour (National Coalition on Health Care). If current trends continue, that figure will rise to $13 per hour in the next 5 to 10 years. That’s $13 added to the hourly cost of each employee.

U.S. business, large and small, are already struggling trying to compete with low-wage manufacturing overseas. These businesses must cut costs to become competitive in the world economy and providing employees with health care at a cost of $13 per hour will not be possible. This cost will necessarily be passed on to the employees if businesses are to survive. How many workers will be able to afford to pay between $260 and $520 a week out of their paychecks to maintain the same level of health insurance they now enjoy?

The failures of GM, Chrysler, Delphi and others are clear evidence that companies can no longer provide the level of benefits which the American worker has come to expect. Change is coming whether we like it or not. Employees will have to pay an increasing share of their health insurance costs or risk their employers dropping coverage. If we don’t develop a national policy addressing the costs of health care, more and more companies will be unable to remain viable unless these costs are increasingly passed on to their employees. Health care reform is not an option if employees are to maintain their current level of insurance and U.S. industry is to survive.

It’s time to put politics aside and demand that members of Congress, democrats and republicans alike, stop the name-calling, sloganeering and fear-mongering and begin acting like adults (a mode of behavior presently foreign to most).

ROBERT F. MOLLIC

Liberty Township