The National Business Group on Health (NBGH) believes strongly that everyone should be required to have health insurance coverage for themselves and dependent children. NBGH represents more than 300 large employers – including 63 of the Fortune 100 – providing health benefits to more than 50 million Americans. Our members invest tremendous resources in their employees’ well-being and believe that reform should build on this model.

While both presidential candidates are talking about reform, a new survey of 3,000 employers from Mercer finds that employers of all sizes – particularly retailers and manufacturers – are skeptical of key elements in their respective plans:

• Employers of all sizes oppose ‘play or pay’ requirements like those being advocated by Senator Obama.
• A plurality of employers of all sizes oppose ending or capping the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health benefits, similar to a plan being touted by Senator McCain.

While large employers support expanding coverage, it will be politically risky to plan to use employers to finance reform. For the past 35 years, large employers have relied upon a national framework known as “ERISA” to provide health benefits to more than 160 million Americans – thereby avoiding a wasteful, duplicative 50-state regulatory scheme. Reform that contemplates wholesale changes to this approach has little appeal. Our large employer members tell us repeatedly that they would be seriously harmed and their employees and dependents at risk if they did not have the federal protection of ERISA. This protection keeps 50 individual states and local jurisdictions from driving up costs and lets employers provide the best benefits packages possible to their employees.

At a time of economic uncertainty, the imperative for real reform has never been greater. Employers and other payers need more objective comparative information about what drugs, devices, and procedures work best. We need a system that emphasizes prevention and wellness and better coordinates the care of the chronically ill. Employers need help lowering drug costs through expanded availability of generic drugs, including a regulatory pathway for generic biologics. Our system needs to realize the efficiencies associated with leveraging health information technology. And we need everyone in the system to make sure that all stakeholders contribute to – and benefit from – real reform.

-President Helen Darling

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized .