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Most Americans of working age get their health insurance through their employers. The Democrats running for President want to keep it that way. The Republicans don’t. If you listen to what each party says about the other, you would get a very different impression. To hear the Democrats tell it, the Republicans are happy with the health-care system we have: all they do is stand in the way of Democratic improvements.

But the truth is that it’s the Republicans who make more radical proposals. They want to make a break with more than six decades of government policy. During World War II, employers started giving workers health benefits to get around wartime wage controls. Since then, the government has continued to give a tax break for employer-provided health insurance; it isn’t taxed, the way wages are.

That’s how we ended up with the health-insurance system we have now, based on employers. You get a tax break if you get your insurance through your job. If you get a raise and use it to buy your own insurance instead, you have to pay taxes on that money. (Ditto if you use your raise to pay doctors directly.) Almost everyone takes the tax break. The market for insurance bought by individuals is, as a result, small and stunted, which is all the more reason to stay in the employer system. (more…)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health care spending for people under 65 is growing faster than for those over that benchmark age, the government reported Tuesday. While the growing number of older Americans has been expected to alter patterns of health spending, the impact has been only modest and is expected to remain that way, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said.

Not surprisingly, per person spending is higher for older people than younger ones

But it has not been growing as fast as costs for working-age people, CMS reported in a paper in the journal Health Affairs.

Among the elderly, the largest decline in spending relative to younger people occurred among those age 85 and older. Spending for this group was 6.9 times higher than spending by the working-age population in 1987, but only 5.7 times higher in 2004.

For those 65 and over health costs were 3.5 times higher than working age people in 1987 and 3.3 times higher in 2004. (more…)

Have you ever worked for a temporary employment service before? If so, do you recall seeing small brochures that offered you health insurance coverage that you could have taken out of your weekly pay? If you’re like most other people, at some point you’ve run across these types of short term health insurance policies, whether you first saw them at a temporary employment service agency or not.

Short term health insurance is designed for individuals with or without families that are in transition in their life. They could be between jobs and need short term health insurance until they can find permanent employment. They may have just graduated from college and their student health insurance is no longer in force. These new graduates will need a new health insurance policy until they find permanent employment. Another reason for buying short term health insurance would be the mandatory waiting period that new employees must go through when they start out in a new job. These waiting periods are usually 90 days to six months, however, some plans only offer enrollment once per year during a certain time frame called a “window”. Here’s an example of this type of plan. (more…)

The percentage of Californians who get health insurance through their jobs is among the lowest in the country, according to a study released Thursday. Nationwide, about 63 percent of Americans have health policies offered by their employers. But in California, only 55.7 percent of workers were covered through their jobs last year, making it the state with the fifth-lowest level of employer-sponsored coverage, according to the study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

The number of employers offering health insurance has fallen nationally in recent years due to rising premiums and the diminishing bargaining power of the average worker. Companies have responded to the pressure by requiring employees to pick up a larger portion of the tab, through higher co-payments and monthly contributions, and reducing benefits and coverage for spouses and children.

In California, the problem is worse due to the sheer size of the population and the fact a large number of residents work in jobs that typically do not offer health insurance, such as agriculture, hospitality and the service industry. (more…)

WASHINGTON | Nearly 1.8 million U.S. veterans are without health insurance, and more than half of them said they had no place to go when they were sick, researchers reported Tuesday. The finding contradicts many Americans’ assumption that all veterans qualify for free health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The uninsured veterans are primarily low- to middle-income workers, ages 44 to 64, who are too poor to afford private insurance coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or VA health care, the Harvard Medical School researchers said.

Analyzing data from two federal surveys, the researchers found that more than one-fourth of the uninsured veterans said they did not get needed medical care or delayed it because of its cost. Nearly half said they had not had an office visit or contact with a health professional in more than a year, and two-thirds said they received no preventive care. (more…)

Costs are up. Coverage is down. And politicians don’t agree on the answers. The debate now raging over how much money the federal government should spend to provide basic health insurance for poor children is just an opening skirmish in what is likely to be an all-out war in coming months and years over how to pay for health care in America.

Almost every presidential candidate in both parties has come up with some proposal that promises to control the costs, broaden the availability and upgrade the quality of health care.

Health care is in the spotlight for an array of reasons — a growing proportion of Americans have no health insurance, costs of providing care are rising far faster than the overall rate of inflation, costs to workers of employer-provided insurance are growing while benefits are limited and the costs of coping with catastrophic illness are placing a growing burden on families and communities.

The challenge is finding ways to provide every American with quality affordable health care without dictating how the care will be offered.

Our failure to make progress toward that goal is causing a slow-motion health care crisis that is already threatening the well-being of millions. (more…)

WASHINGTON - The House passed a revised children’s health proposal Thursday, but not by the two-thirds margin that supporters will need if President Bush vetoes the measure as promised.

The 265-142 vote was a victory for Bush and his allies, who urged House Republicans to reject Democrats’ claims that changes to the legislation had met their chief concerns. If the same vote occurs on a veto override attempt, Bush will prevail, as he did earlier this month when he vetoed a similar bill.

Liberal groups continue to run attack ads against Republicans siding with Bush on the issue, which many Democrats consider a winner for their party.

Democratic leaders said changes to the bill, which would add $35 billion to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, had addressed critics’ concerns about participation by adults, illegal immigrants and families able to afford health insurance. But GOP leaders called the changes insignificant and politically motivated. (more…)

Health insurance, no matter what form it takes, is an essential part of our lives. We might be incapacitated one day, get into an accident, or have to receive flu shots - with the rising costs of medication, will we be able to afford such medical necessities that are fast becoming luxuries?

Before you go buying medical insurance, however, you might want to compare different premium prices and packages offered by different companies. You can access such information by looking for free health insurance quotes online.

There are many different kinds of free health insurance quotes online, depending on the kind of insurance that you need. Individual insurance, or insurance for families, are common online. Such insurance packages will run for the long term, and they will cover a wide variety of treatments. These may include partial coverage for vaccination for your children, or coverage for accidents that you might run into. (more…)