Gallup: Employer-based health insurance continues to trend down

Gallup: Employer-based health insurance continues to trend down. “Governments and businesses have and will continue to cut back and/or reform their health coverage offerings to handle tough economic circumstances, rising healthcare costs, and requirements of the Affordable Care Act.” If you like your health insurance, you can try and keep it! Thank the three stooges, Barry, Nancy and Harry.

Bonfire of the Absurdities: After 35 year career writing software for IBM mainframes, am now self-employed contractor thinking of joining a union and striking for higher wages. Cured morbid fear of heights when I learned to look at them as lengths standing on end. Uncompromising in refusal to accept browser cookies. Amateur investor who has accumulated a small fortune in the market after starting out years ago with a large one. For recreation, I run, hike, kayak and play tennis but will not consider synchronized swimming under any circumstances.

View Comments (30)

  • I get it. And I disagree. Healthcare for kids should be a right; they have no options and are born into it.
    After the age of 18 it's game on: no guaranteed healthcare, no social security, no social security disability and no medicare. It's all up to you--do or die.
    My mom being a nurse is very relevant: she has great insight into the system, knows it from the inside and knows exactly how it works. You can only guess. 30 years of experience is a long time. Next time you meet up with a nurse, ask 'em. The answer will be the same.

    • I AM a nurse! Degreed, licensed, the whole 9 yards. And for the most part, I worked the trenches-I was not a teacher or an administrator.

        • Yes she does. She has no interest in her profession being managed by the government. It is bad enough with managed health care. You are wrong about the Docs too. I have several who are friends and they are already pegging their fees to Medicare rates and they are taking a beating. The next phase will be American kids NOT going to med school and taking on the cost and time for no reward. That means further importation of doctors from India etc. The profession is in a death spiral and it all begins with the federal government's intrusion into the private sector starting with LBJ and his now bankrupt programs. The lawyers and insurance companies share blame too.

          • The profession is managed by a government with no accountability: the insurance government--a shadow government monopoly with anti-trust protection, which is the ugliest form of socialism.
            I agree with you re LBJ. Let's get rid of SS, SS disability, medicare.

            We disagree regarding Docs; they are insurance shills with no guts. They advocate for insurance companies, not the patient. That's why our wounded warriors won't come close to insurance companies or their flow charts.

          • Social security, SS disability and SSI were started under Roosevelt, so old people would not starve once they could no longer work. Medicare was started by LBJ as were food stamps, etc because he wanted to prevent kids growing up the way he had, poor and hungry, with no healthcare at all. I doubt he ever expected that it would be given to non citizens, and that people would prefer the hand outs to working.

          • Your comments very, very true. You're right on the money. However, I'm for going back to personal responsibility. If you can't work full time, you should have a lifetime's worth of savings in place, as well as something part-time. An adult has had 50 years to make it happen. If not, then live under a RR trestle or finish it yourself.

            Kids are different: they drew into their hand and have no choice. Thus, guaranteed healthcare, guaranteed schooling and guaranteed school meals should be a right. After the age of 18 it's game on: your on your own.

          • So I worked from when I was 12 or 13 as a babysitter, then with a neighborhood CPA, then at my church, and then several part time jobs to pay my way through my nursing and college program. I worked for 35 years as a nurse, ws the primary bread winner for 4-5 people (we had relatives coming to stay with us) and in 1996 I ws diagnosed with kidney failure. THere is no treatment. I went on dialysis in 2003. I eventually got a transplant, developed diabetes due to the transplant drugs, as well as osteoporosis, elevated cholesterol, anemia, and a hosts of other issues. Should I now be on the street because I didn't have a lifetime of savings? Oh, and I lost the vast majority of my 401K when Clinton's bubble burst. I still had children at home. THEY worked in highschool to supplement our income, and I worked as much as I could. But there were no savings-we barely made the bills. Oh, and for ALL of those years except when I was babysitting, I paid FICA taxes into Social Security and Eventually Medicare. Shit happens, Erik. Not everyone on Social Security, disability, etc is a worthless scum sucking lazy ass. Should I now be left on an iceburg somewhere to freeze to death? (and remember, when I started working, minimum wage was $1.25, I think, Maybe less.)

          • Not at all SA_Rose. I believe all the above programs were created to help our citizens.

            And as we both agree, non legal residents should not gain such benefits. Nor should anyone aspire to reside on them for life. These programs all work effectivley if not abused, and the problem is overuse and abuse . It becoming a privilege rather than a short term solution till the person can pull themselves up to something better.

            I also wonder how much these programs have robbed from the neighboor helping neighbor communites and communites relying on their churches for help.

  • GREAT! Once weaned off employer insurance the worker is empowered to call his own shots, become a contractor and take bids for his work or start his own business. No more employer health insurance or any other corporate cartel crap, such as bogus corporate credit/age checks.

    • Erik: Do you work at being retarded, or is it inborn? The only reason most people can afford health care at all is because they are getting insurance through an employer, The huge pool of people oin the account decreases the over all per capita cost. If individuals have to go out and buy their own, it is prohibitively expensive, and unavailable if you are a "bad risk." Meaning if you're sick, forget it. Remember insurance is gambling. You pay premiums in case you need the care, and the insurance carrier covers you in hopes you won't cost them more than the premiums you pay. Please GOD can't somebody work out stem cell applications to increase intelligence!? Oh, and I am one of those insurance shills. Except that I wasn't paid $10 /hour because I was a registered nurse, with 35 years experience. I was a case manager, and I got employers to pay for thing not generally covered under the plan, just by presenting to them how the out of contact treatment or item would in the long run SAVE both the company and the patient and family. I had Doctors act like absolute asses when we were trying to certify hospital stays. One guy blew me up and I finally lost my temper and told him I wanted him to simply tell me why the patient needed to BE in the hospital. He got quiet, apologized, presented the case and everything was fine. I never had another problem with him. Doctors generally don't spend time with patients because they don't really LIKE patients (there are exceptions.) Most treat the disease or condition, not the patient. Good insurance companies try to ensure that the patient is seen as an individual, and that the family's needs and wants are addressed. Don't speak if you have no clue what you are talking about.

    • What will happen when all private health insurance is done away with? Don't you understand that is the whole purpose behind Obamacare? Doing away with all private insurance so we will be forced to accept "universal health care" run by the government?

      Good luck with that child, there will be no other choices. No shopping around, no calling your own shots, you will accept what the government gives you. I hope you never need a heart transplant, 'cause you will die first. I hope you don't get some sort of cancer when you are older, you will be allowed to die instead of get treatment.

      Healthcare will be based on a cost/return formula. If it costs X amount for a heart transplant or your cancer cure, will you be able to work as a taxpaying citizen for X number of years to pay for that treatment? That is where Obamacare is leading us. If the cost to treat you outweighs the return you will be placed on a waiting list so long you will die. Government sponsored genocide in it's purest form and you think this is a good idea?

      • There already is government healthcare: it is the insurance cartel calling the shots. My mom has been a nurse for 30 years; there is no doctor-patient relationship: it is patient/$10hr insurance hack on the phone with a flow-chart. The Dr. is nothing more than an insurance company shill.
        Obama ran private insurance past our vets--and they howled. Now Willard is doing the same; our vets know they won't get quality healthcare based on shareholders calling the shots.
        True private insurance will only be accomplished when the anti-trust exemption blanket is taken away from the insurance cartel. The only other entity which enjoys the anti-trust exemption is Major League Baseball. Get rid of it.
        Until that time, it's important that kids have guaranteed health care and that no one be denied healthcare based on a pre-existing condition or that insurance companies pick off non-employer insureds via rescission. To bring down the insurance cartel shadow-government it will take a concerted effort by everyone.

        • Guaranteed health care or health insurance? You don't even frame the argument correctly. Medicine and the dispensing of medicine is not a right. It is a finite commodity. You simply do not get that do you?

          Your mother being a nurse is irrelevant. An anecdote to describe something as large as the health care industry is dumb. That would be like saying that your individual car breaks down frequently; therefore, all autos are unreliable.

    • And what happens next is the so called "Obamacare" gets totally overloaded, and thus starts rationed health care. Hope you like waiting 20 weeks to finally have your head removed from your ass.

        • Looks like our resident expert on asses is back. He looks like one, sounds like one, acts like one, and damn sure smells like one.

          • You've been spending way too much time with your buddies, right wing nut child rapist Jerry Sandusky and airport suck-off specialist Sen. Larry Craig; get back into the shower /airport toilet with your best friends and let them work their magic: making you airtight. If they aren't available, you can always get butt-jammed by RNC chairman Ken Mehlman or Preacher Ted Haggard.

          • Taking cues from your buddy Barny Fwank there fag boy? Typical loser liberal, when you can't debate, insult, and demean. Let me let you in on a little hint, if you were to ever say something like that to my face, I would most likely kill you with my bare hands.

          • Young erik here, she's a real piece of HIV+ work. When you're ringing her neck, don't get any of that infected pustule's junk on ya.

          • I was thinking of introducing this poltroon to something they obviously have never seen before, steel toed work boots. They can check out the bottom tread, close up.

        • Look who's back after a long absence...or should I saw abscess. Why its Mr penis, the talking dick. Finally got some time on the old OWS sharetime laptop huh? Hows that working out for you? Get and serious illness yet? I can only hope....Now run along and play in the street with some heavy traffic.

  • Pretty soon nobody will have health insurance, at which point Barry, Nancy, and Harry will be dodging high velocity lead objects.

    • That's exactly what I was thinking. In an attempt to insure everyone, it will end up with NO ONE being insured, and we will return to the pay/barter as you go system, and overall, healthcare will suffer. Idiots.