The "Invisible Problem" and Unscrupulous, Freeloading Employers

To be sure, Florida has an "invisible problem" with the growing lack of health insurance, Indeed, "Nearly 20 percent of the state's working age population is without health insurance, compared to about 17 percent five years ago, according to a study by the state Agency for Health Care Administration." Indeed, "More than one-third of those in their early 20s lacked coverage, and fully 28 percent of those ages 25 to 34 were uninsured." "Unhealthy situation".

Today, the Palm Beach Post explores solutions, noting that:

[w]hile the number of uninsured has climbed steadily the past 20 years, treating them is often called America's invisible problem because it goes unnoticed to most people who have insurance.

"Fragile system the only option". That's all well and good, but what about those companies that provide little or no health insurance to their workers, and use the financial savings to eke out a competitive advantage over their competitors that do provide decent benefits? But why should those irresponsible companies benefit from having their workers use subsidized health care? Consider Wal-Mart, one of America's most "admired" companies, as described in the most recent New York Review of Books:

In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.

Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.

"Inside the Leviathan" (the quote is from the text accompanying footnote 9).

In that connection, irresponsible companies have largely destroyed the union construction industry (which is contractually obligated to provide pensions and good health insurance (not to mention quality training programs)) by providing little or no health insurance (forget pensions or training) and off loading these costs onto public assistance programs, and turn turn shifting these ill-gotten savings to a competitive advantage in the construction bidding process (and, ironically, often winning bids on publicly funded construction work).

Perhaps, as the Orlando Sentinel editoral board asks today:

At some point, people who pay for health insurance -- employers and workers -- will recognize they're subsidizing the freeloaders who end up stiffing the hospitals. The hospitals, in turn, pass that on to the paying customers.

The sooner we recognize this, and stop the freeloading, the better.