Clips: Health stories in the news

How much of your premium actually goes to healthcare?

The health insurance industry claims that 87 cents of your premium dollar goes to medical care.

But a new Senate analysis finds that with some plans as little as 66 cents of your dollar goes to care, with the rest going to administrative expenses, marketing and company profits, Reed Abelson writes in today’s New York Times.

How much of a premium actually goes to care depends a great deal on whether you buy your insurance on your own or get it through your employer—and on the size of your employer, Senate investigators have found.

Overall, for large employers about 84 cents of a premium dollar goes to medical care, 80 cents for small employers, and 73 cents for individuals.

Abelson writes:

The insurance industry’s trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, said Monday that the 87-cent figure it cited as the industry average was based on information collected by the federal government and was an accurate reflection of how much of each dollar in premiums was spent on medical claims.

To learn more:

• Read Abelson’s article Senate Pressing Insurers on the Amount of Premiums They Spend on Care.
• Visit the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for additional materials, including a chart showing the results by different insurers.

Lack of sick leave keeps workers with H1N1 on the job

H1N1 viruses (Photo: Goldsmith and Rollin CDC)

Public health experts are worried that workers infected with H1N1 are showing up at work, spreading the highly contagious virus, because their employers don’t offer paid sick days, Steven Greenhouse reports in today’s New York Times.

Greenhouse writes:

Tens of millions of people, or about 40 percent of all private-sector workers, do not receive paid sick days, and as a result many of them cannot afford to stay home when they are ill. Even some companies that provide paid sick days have policies that make it difficult to call in sick, like giving demerits each time someone misses a day.

To learn more:

• Read Greenhouse’s article At work with the flu.
• Visit Public Health – Seattle & King County’s H1N1 information page for employers.

The fight now isn’t over reform but how it will be perceived.

In a column in today’s Seattle Times, E.J. Dionne writes that “barring astoundingly self-defeating behavior by Democrats” Congress will pass and the President Obama will sign a major healthcare reform bill this year.

Dionne writes:

He and his party will then own the most sweeping reform of the American social-safety net since the passage of Medicare in the 1960s and, arguably, Social Security in the 1930s.

Both parties know this. That’s why much of the rhetoric you’ll hear in the coming weeks will not really be about whether to pass a bill. It will be designed to shape how the voters who will decide the 2010 elections — and, ultimately, the fate of health-care reform itself — come to view the new system.

Dionne goes on to discuss how both parties are going try to add their spin to this debate.

To learn more:

• Read E.J. Dionne’s column: Defining health-care reform: Passage of bill is just the beginning

Tags: H1N1, Health Insurance, Health-care Reform, Swine Flu

Category: News