Another survey from a benefit consultant indicating that employee health plan premiums are set to rise sharply over at least the next year. There are several benefit consulting firms that advise employers on their employee health benefit plans and they are all currently projecting premium increases well above those seen in recent years. This particular survey finds that the trend extends worldwide and actually projects somewhat lower health care inflation in the US next year, but I think that is clearly erroneous based on the increases employers are already seeing in 2023 rates. The Willis Towers Watson survey blames providers for cost increases, and poor lifestyle habits among employees. (WTW Survey)
Ahhh, but not to worry, the usual group of ignorant single-payer dunces is out with yet another misleading piece of research suggesting that our health care cost problems are just the result of “administrative waste”, all of which would magically disappear if we only had a single-payer system. What would certainly disappear is your ability to access good quality health care. But once more, all that really matters to the pro-regressives is equity–everyone should be equally miserable and have an equally poor life, including poor health. The brief claims that it is hard to accurately estimate how much of health care spending is for administrative costs and then goes on to make a wild stab saying it is 15% to 30%. Pretty big range. But of course they get there by just citing other studies, all by the single-payer nuts. And what is really funny is they identify savings which don’t even amount to 1% of the supposedly wasteful savings. All a big joke to the ideologues, who know what they want whether it makes sense or not
The US does spend a lot of money on administrative costs but a huge amount of that is due to regulatory requirements, especially around reimbursement. If the big-government lovers really want to help, they could eliminate all those administrative burdens. And some of the spending goes not for pure administration, but to try to improve quality and manage care efficiently, which ends of with overall savings. I am sure, however, that this is not the last of the research we will see whose sole purpose is to try to justify moving the US to a disastrous single payer system. (HA Study)
