As a new study from Hewitt Associates reveals, the cost of health care has been rising by up to double digits for more than a decade. The study also demonstrates that the passage of the Affordable Care Act came at a critical time.
The study confirms our own analysis – that the potential premium impact of the new consumer protections that went into effect last week – from covering adult children on parent’s plans to eliminating lifetime limits, preventing insurance companies from dropping you when you are sick, and eliminating discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions – is roughly 1-2 percent of the more than 8 percent projected increase in the study. And it’s important to remember that any increases will be offset by a number of provisions in the new law that will save money for consumers and employers. The new law will help bend the cost curve of health care for employers and their workers by:
Reducing Premiums: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that health insurance premiums could decrease by 3 percent for employers and a Business Round Table (BRT)/Hewitt Associates study found that employers that offer and contribute to health insurance coverage for their workers could experience cost savings of as much as $3,000 a person by expanding access to coverage and enacting various cost cutting reforms included in the Act.
Bringing Costs Down for Small Businesses: The new law provides $40 billion in tax credits to help small businesses purchase coverage for their employees. In 2014, small businesses will be able to purchase private insurance through health Exchanges, which will provide them with the same purchasing power as large businesses.
Helping Pay for Early Retirees: The law created a new Early Retiree Reinsurance Program that provides employers resources to offset the health care costs they pay for their early retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare. Employers must use the funding to reduce their health care costs or premiums for all employees Today, more than 2,000 employers are participating in the program.
Reducing the “Hidden Tax” on Insured Americans: Today, families with insurance pay a hidden tax of up to $1,000 to subsidize care for the uninsured. By making sure insurance covers people who are most at risk, there will be less uncompensated care and the amount of cost shifting among those who have coverage today will be reduced by up to $1 billion in 2013.
Preventing Bankruptcy: Medical costs contribute to about half of the more than 500,000 personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007. Bankruptcies can be avoided through ensuring insurance companies can’t drop people when they get sick, can’t place a lifetime or unrestricted annual limit on coverage, or discriminate against kids with preexisting conditions.
Preventing Illness: Reducing preventable illness through new prevention coverage will result in significant savings. For instance, preventing obesity will lower premiums by .05 to .1 percent. Every dollar spent on immunizations could save $5.30 on direct health care costs and $16.50 on total societal costs of disease. Reducing preventable illness can also increase worker productivity – today, increased sickness and lack of coverage security reduce economic output by $260 billion per year.
Reducing Out of Pocket Costs: Preventive health benefits will also help reduce out of pocket costs. For example, guidelines suggest that a 58-year old woman who is at risk for heart disease should receive a mammogram, a colon cancer screening, a Pap test, a diabetes test, a cholesterol test, and an annual flu shot; under a typical insurance plan, these tests could cost more than $300 out of her own pocket.
Last week, we celebrated the six month anniversary of the law and the day when the worst insurance company practices began to be eliminated. This week, we’ll continue our efforts to implement the new law and deliver the benefits of reform – including the $100 billion the law will reduce the deficit this decade and the trillion dollars in the next decade — to the American people.
Stephanie Cutter is Assistant to the President for Special Projects
Bill Clinton: Save America’s Economy With Clean Energy (And Save The Planet)
For the second year in a row, the Wonk Room is covering the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City.
President Bill Clinton believes the “number one thing” to restore the American economy is clean, efficient energy. In a blogger roundtable at the beginning of his Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Clinton told us his “favorite ideas” for making the green economy a political and economic reality:
One: Federal loan guarantees for building energy efficiency retrofits
Two: Renewable energy initiatives in economically depressed cities
Three: Green jobs programs for poor Americans
Clinton, relaxed and slim, held court with a dazzling mastery of policy details, wit, and storytelling. Citing a Center for American Progress report on the promise of energy efficiency, Clinton described his desire for the federal government to kickstart private financing of energy retrofits, much as the Clinton Foundation had done for the Empire State Building:
The Center for American Progress says we can get half the way home to an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2010 by efficiency alone. Unemployment in construction is 25 percent. We can’t go out and build new houses. And there are very few office buildings that need to be built. So what I think we should do is to have a lot more Empire State Buildings. We should retrofit every public school, every college and university building every hospital, every auditorium in this country, and every office building unencumbered by debt.
Clinton believes the reason that this investment hasn’t already happened is that “spooked” banks don’t want to make loans that could collapse. His solution is to establish a federal loan guarantee program, which he believes could create one million jobs with only $15 billion in federal investment:
Give them a federal guarantee like the SBA guarantee, and you only have to set aside $1 for every $10 you loan. Still very conservative, because we know the historic failure rate is one percent, not ten percent. It might not cost the taxpayers anything.
Here’s the multiple: every billion-dollar investment in retrofits gives you 7000 jobs. Homes 8000. Wind energy 3300 if you build and assemble the windmills where you put them up. Solar 1900, coal 870, nuclear a little over 900. This is not close. If you want to put America back to work, give a loan guarantee, get banks start making loans.
Set aside $15 billion for guarantees, you get $150 billion in bank lending, you get a million jobs.
His other policy ideas are about making the clean energy economy real for the American people, rich and poor:
My second candidate: pick places that are both distressed and full of potential for energy independence. My number one candidate is Nevada, where the sun shine and the wind blows. And you’ve got all those real expensive hotels there with roofs that could be filled with solar panels. And you have all the hills around that could be filled with windmills.
I would say take a few places like that and go straight out and make them energy independent and document how many jobs have been created, and then everybody will want to do that.
My third candidate is prove it works for poor people. One of our best commitments is designed to provide after school jobs and summer jobs for poor kids in Harlem, upper Manhattan Washington heights by paying them to go in and retrofit a lot of these old buildings, whitewashing the black roofs.
If you did those three things so that every day you were proving over and over again to all the naysayers that it was good economics to build a clean energy future, you can build a consensus necessary to do what has to be done. You could beat the special interest groups.
He admitted that the key problem with this vision is that it requires a change from how the energy sector traditionally makes money:
If you make a deal for a nuclear power plant or a coal-fired power plant and you knowingly deprive all these jobs increase greenhouse gas emissions or you increase other risk or you increase huge costs — with nuclear, it’s always more expensive — the only real reason they do it is because they’ve always done it that way, and it is so much simpler. If you’re running the utility, there’s one contractor that’s going to build that plant, there’s one supplier of the fuel, and then you go to one PUC and they give you permission to make the ratepayers pay for it at a profit. It’s simple because it’s centralized.
The new energy economy is more decentralized, but it’s less expensive, more job intensive, and parenthetically will save the planet.
“That’s what I think we have to do,” Clinton concluded. “You’ve got to prove this is good economics. And it is! The number one thing we could do for America is change the way we produce and consume energy.”
Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report
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"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
bench craft company rip off
bench craft company rip off
Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report
Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
As a new study from Hewitt Associates reveals, the cost of health care has been rising by up to double digits for more than a decade. The study also demonstrates that the passage of the Affordable Care Act came at a critical time.
The study confirms our own analysis – that the potential premium impact of the new consumer protections that went into effect last week – from covering adult children on parent’s plans to eliminating lifetime limits, preventing insurance companies from dropping you when you are sick, and eliminating discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions – is roughly 1-2 percent of the more than 8 percent projected increase in the study. And it’s important to remember that any increases will be offset by a number of provisions in the new law that will save money for consumers and employers. The new law will help bend the cost curve of health care for employers and their workers by:
Reducing Premiums: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that health insurance premiums could decrease by 3 percent for employers and a Business Round Table (BRT)/Hewitt Associates study found that employers that offer and contribute to health insurance coverage for their workers could experience cost savings of as much as $3,000 a person by expanding access to coverage and enacting various cost cutting reforms included in the Act.
Bringing Costs Down for Small Businesses: The new law provides $40 billion in tax credits to help small businesses purchase coverage for their employees. In 2014, small businesses will be able to purchase private insurance through health Exchanges, which will provide them with the same purchasing power as large businesses.
Helping Pay for Early Retirees: The law created a new Early Retiree Reinsurance Program that provides employers resources to offset the health care costs they pay for their early retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare. Employers must use the funding to reduce their health care costs or premiums for all employees Today, more than 2,000 employers are participating in the program.
Reducing the “Hidden Tax” on Insured Americans: Today, families with insurance pay a hidden tax of up to $1,000 to subsidize care for the uninsured. By making sure insurance covers people who are most at risk, there will be less uncompensated care and the amount of cost shifting among those who have coverage today will be reduced by up to $1 billion in 2013.
Preventing Bankruptcy: Medical costs contribute to about half of the more than 500,000 personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007. Bankruptcies can be avoided through ensuring insurance companies can’t drop people when they get sick, can’t place a lifetime or unrestricted annual limit on coverage, or discriminate against kids with preexisting conditions.
Preventing Illness: Reducing preventable illness through new prevention coverage will result in significant savings. For instance, preventing obesity will lower premiums by .05 to .1 percent. Every dollar spent on immunizations could save $5.30 on direct health care costs and $16.50 on total societal costs of disease. Reducing preventable illness can also increase worker productivity – today, increased sickness and lack of coverage security reduce economic output by $260 billion per year.
Reducing Out of Pocket Costs: Preventive health benefits will also help reduce out of pocket costs. For example, guidelines suggest that a 58-year old woman who is at risk for heart disease should receive a mammogram, a colon cancer screening, a Pap test, a diabetes test, a cholesterol test, and an annual flu shot; under a typical insurance plan, these tests could cost more than $300 out of her own pocket.
Last week, we celebrated the six month anniversary of the law and the day when the worst insurance company practices began to be eliminated. This week, we’ll continue our efforts to implement the new law and deliver the benefits of reform – including the $100 billion the law will reduce the deficit this decade and the trillion dollars in the next decade — to the American people.
Stephanie Cutter is Assistant to the President for Special Projects
Bill Clinton: Save America’s Economy With Clean Energy (And Save The Planet)
For the second year in a row, the Wonk Room is covering the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City.
President Bill Clinton believes the “number one thing” to restore the American economy is clean, efficient energy. In a blogger roundtable at the beginning of his Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Clinton told us his “favorite ideas” for making the green economy a political and economic reality:
One: Federal loan guarantees for building energy efficiency retrofits
Two: Renewable energy initiatives in economically depressed cities
Three: Green jobs programs for poor Americans
Clinton, relaxed and slim, held court with a dazzling mastery of policy details, wit, and storytelling. Citing a Center for American Progress report on the promise of energy efficiency, Clinton described his desire for the federal government to kickstart private financing of energy retrofits, much as the Clinton Foundation had done for the Empire State Building:
The Center for American Progress says we can get half the way home to an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2010 by efficiency alone. Unemployment in construction is 25 percent. We can’t go out and build new houses. And there are very few office buildings that need to be built. So what I think we should do is to have a lot more Empire State Buildings. We should retrofit every public school, every college and university building every hospital, every auditorium in this country, and every office building unencumbered by debt.
Clinton believes the reason that this investment hasn’t already happened is that “spooked” banks don’t want to make loans that could collapse. His solution is to establish a federal loan guarantee program, which he believes could create one million jobs with only $15 billion in federal investment:
Give them a federal guarantee like the SBA guarantee, and you only have to set aside $1 for every $10 you loan. Still very conservative, because we know the historic failure rate is one percent, not ten percent. It might not cost the taxpayers anything.
Here’s the multiple: every billion-dollar investment in retrofits gives you 7000 jobs. Homes 8000. Wind energy 3300 if you build and assemble the windmills where you put them up. Solar 1900, coal 870, nuclear a little over 900. This is not close. If you want to put America back to work, give a loan guarantee, get banks start making loans.
Set aside $15 billion for guarantees, you get $150 billion in bank lending, you get a million jobs.
His other policy ideas are about making the clean energy economy real for the American people, rich and poor:
My second candidate: pick places that are both distressed and full of potential for energy independence. My number one candidate is Nevada, where the sun shine and the wind blows. And you’ve got all those real expensive hotels there with roofs that could be filled with solar panels. And you have all the hills around that could be filled with windmills.
I would say take a few places like that and go straight out and make them energy independent and document how many jobs have been created, and then everybody will want to do that.
My third candidate is prove it works for poor people. One of our best commitments is designed to provide after school jobs and summer jobs for poor kids in Harlem, upper Manhattan Washington heights by paying them to go in and retrofit a lot of these old buildings, whitewashing the black roofs.
If you did those three things so that every day you were proving over and over again to all the naysayers that it was good economics to build a clean energy future, you can build a consensus necessary to do what has to be done. You could beat the special interest groups.
He admitted that the key problem with this vision is that it requires a change from how the energy sector traditionally makes money:
If you make a deal for a nuclear power plant or a coal-fired power plant and you knowingly deprive all these jobs increase greenhouse gas emissions or you increase other risk or you increase huge costs — with nuclear, it’s always more expensive — the only real reason they do it is because they’ve always done it that way, and it is so much simpler. If you’re running the utility, there’s one contractor that’s going to build that plant, there’s one supplier of the fuel, and then you go to one PUC and they give you permission to make the ratepayers pay for it at a profit. It’s simple because it’s centralized.
The new energy economy is more decentralized, but it’s less expensive, more job intensive, and parenthetically will save the planet.
“That’s what I think we have to do,” Clinton concluded. “You’ve got to prove this is good economics. And it is! The number one thing we could do for America is change the way we produce and consume energy.”
bench craft company rip off
Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report
Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report
Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report
Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
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