Health Progress and Policy

Information for Businesses

Health care costs are skyrocketing. Family incomes can't keep up with rising health burdens. Fewer Americans can afford health care or coverage. And American businesses are forced to choose between providing health benefits or jobs. The health care system in our country is broken, and we need real reform. This nation's business leaders should demand change because health benefit costs are:

Large and Growing: The actual cost of health coverage, coupled with its astronomical growth, has taken a toll on American businesses, which finance the lion's share of coverage:

• The total health premium, for an average family, is $11,480 – about equal to the salary of a full-time, minimum-wage worker.
• The cost of health benefits will exceed profits in Fortune 500 companies by 2008.

Eating into Wages and Job Growth: The impact on health costs has been felt by workers:

• One in five employers slowed hiring in 2006 due to health costs.
• Over the past six years, health insurance premiums have grown by 87 percent while wages have grown by only 20 percent and inflation by only 18 percent.

Dragging on Businesses' Competitiveness: The U.S. used to be the world's leader in innovation and business climate. We are falling behind, in part due to health costs:

• Nearly half of small businesses no longer provide health insurance, creating a "race to the bottom" for workers' benefits.
• U.S. automakers spend more on health costs than steel. The same is not true for competitors based in nations that provide health care to all their citizens.
• Rising health costs diminish innovation and competitiveness by forcing American businesses to choose between investing in technology and paying for health care benefits

Resulting from Unfair Rules and Special-Interest Politics: These problems are not predestined. Instead, they result from policy choices made by a White House and Congress that have failed to address America's health care crisis, providing health insurance and drug companies with record profits but leaving American businesses with higher costs, fewer benefits, and millions more uninsured.

Solvable - Through Leadership: Business leaders should document their own health care challenge, be catalysts for change, and embrace real reform to the health care system:

• All Americans should have affordable coverage that maintains choice of doctors and plans, controls costs, and expands preventive care.
• In a system where everybody benefits from health care coverage, everyone should help pay for it and share responsibility for health care costs.

Updated: October 20, 2006