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Health care cost projected to rise 9%. Competition, not regulation, might be the cure.

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 20:26:03 GMT

Health care cost projected to rise 9%. Competition, not regulation, might be the cure.

If you are like the majority of Americans who are covered by an employer-sponsored health insurance plan, you may be preparing to sift through the pile of paperwork that arrives with the start of your health insurance open enrollment period.

If you are a business owner or human resources professional in charge of making decisions about the benefits you offer your employees, you may already be considering the coverage options for your health insurance plan.

Either way, you might want to hold on to your wallet.

According to professional services firm Aon, “The average cost of employer-sponsored health care coverage in the U.S. is expected to increase 9.0 percent, surpassing $16,000 per employee in 2025.”

Some costs go up as inflation rises, with the cost of wages and supplies used for medical care going up like about everything else these days. Unfortunately, even as overall inflation cools, this forecast health care cost increase would be even higher than last year’s cost hike. This will put more pressure on the bottom lines of employers and families just as relief was in sight in other parts of the economy.

This may feel like a same-song-second-verse situation, seeing as how you’ve lived through past health care cost increases around this time of year seemingly every year. Perhaps you have already resorted to setting the bar low and preparing for disappointment.

Employers can, and often do, dedicate more dollars to protect their employees from price hikes, but that is only sustainable for so long. Can we somehow change course toward a better future for health care affordability?

Some would have you believe that the way forward is through new government regulations on employer-sponsored health plans. Whether it’s mandating additional coverage, imposing price controls on medications, eliminating health plan networks, requiring certain levels of reimbursement for various service providers, stringing up additional red tape on pharmacy benefit managers, known as PBMs, banning incentives to shop at cheaper providers, or restricting mail-order prescription drugs, these “solutions” from the government only serve to drive up costs and limit options for employers and employees.

So how can we escape from this quagmire of ever-increasing costs for health care?

As the saying goes, when you’re in a hole, stop digging.

That is to say, how about we not do all of those things?

More regulation usually brings unintended consequences, and almost always raises costs on businesses and consumers.

Case in point: Congress is considering additional mandates on PBMs that could stifle the very competition that helps to keep prices in check. By imposing new layers of regulation, the government risks creating an environment where PBMs, on behalf of employers, can no longer effectively negotiate rebates from drug manufacturers, manage high-cost specialty medications, or employ cost-control mechanisms to ensure that patients receive the most appropriate and economical treatments. This will ultimately lead to higher prices for all of us.

Additional regulatory burdens will not help Kansans manage rising health care costs, and we shouldn’t sit idly by while budget-busting proposals meander their way through the halls of Congress or the Kansas Statehouse. Let’s stand up with our fellow Kansans to tell our elected officials that we can’t afford any more anti-competitive legislation that raises the cost of health care for Kansas businesses, employees, and their families.

Instead, we should take a hard look at the actual cost of providing health care as a good next step. Employers can help by seeking out innovative partners to negotiate better deals for prescription drugs, encouraging best practices that lead to better health outcomes, and linking arms with networks of cost-conscious providers that deliver quality services in an efficient manner.

By embracing free market principles and resisting the push for more government intervention, we can create a more efficient health care system. Let’s work together to keep health care costs down and maintain the high-quality and accessible care that Kansas employers and employees need.

Andrew Wiens serves as Executive Director of Kansas Employers for Affordable Healthcare, as well as Director of Government Relations at Dugan Consulting Group.

Read more at: https://www.kansas.com/opinion/guest-commentary/article292571709.html#storylink=cpy

MIKE POMPEO: Kamala Harris would crush families with big-government price controls

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 20:18:45 GMT

MIKE POMPEO: Kamala Harris would crush families with big-government price controls

When a politician promises to use government power to force "lower prices" and "transparency," you should expect the opposite outcome. Under the Biden-Harris administration, families have faced skyrocketing costs on everything from groceries to prescription drugs, yet Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed on the campaign trail that the best way to fix this is to insert even more federal control into every corner of our economy. Here's why these policies would be so devastating and lead to even higher costs for Americans.

While Harris has largely avoided the press and declined to publish policy plans on her website, she recently gave a speech outlining her economic priorities in three key areas: food, healthcare, and housing. An examination of her proposals shows that they would all be disasters.

Groceries

Harris began her remarks by acknowledging that under her tenure as vice president, "a loaf of bread costs 50% more" and "ground beef is up almost 50%." She's right — and anyone who has been to the grocery store has seen similar price increases for eggs, cereal and many other staple foods.

But instead of taking responsibility for the out-of-control government spending and failed policies that actually caused these increases, Harris instead proposed passing the "first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food." Under this "ban," bureaucrats in Washington would get to decide what constitutes gouging — or, in other words, what they think the price should be.

Vice President Kamala Harris's economic proposals would inject more big government into the lives of ordinary Americans. FILE: Harris speaks during a campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (Alex Wroblewski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Banning "price gouging" is not a new or novel idea — it’s just that when the Soviet Union was still around, we called it by its proper name: price controls. Federal bureaucrats at the Federal Trade Commission would decide a "fair" price for bread in Pittsburgh or milk in Topeka.

Price controls don’t work for very simple and sound reasons. Grocery stores operate on very thin profit margins, often just a few percentage points. So, when a federal bureaucrat tells them they must sell bacon for less than what it costs them to purchase it, they simply won’t sell bacon.

Smaller stores that rely on sales of such products to survive would go under. Customers would be left with fewer options to buy bacon at all. And as stores stop selling bacon, there would be less of a market for farmers and ranchers to produce it, reducing supply and pushing prices even higher — as competition and incentives collapse. This isn’t just theory. We literally saw it happen to the Soviet Union.

The price hikes we’re seeing under the Biden-Harris administration are driven by inflation across the market, not by suddenly greedy grocery store owners. The solution is to return to responsible, limited government and a pro-growth economic platform — not impose ruinous price controls that would set a course toward total implosion of our economy.

Healthcare

Harris’s healthcare proposals have received less attention but are just as damaging. She criticized pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — the companies that negotiate lower drug costs on behalf of employers and other purchasers of healthcare coverage.

I ran small businesses in Kansas and, having seen the high cost of prescription drugs for employees, I know the importance of these negotiations, and the savings they produce. Harris’s attacks on PBMs follows years of anti-PBM policies from the current administration, particularly from Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan.

While transparency sounds appealing, what she’s really proposing is for PBMs to disclose publicly — including to all drug manufacturers—the savings they secure in negotiations.

Disclosing this information would be good only for the biggest drug manufacturers. It would allow them to gain a government-created upper hand in knowing which drugs they can discount less, ultimately meaning higher prices for patients.

President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who wants even more federal control of the economy. (Tierney L. Cross)

Additional proposals targeting the market-based, cost-saving role of PBMs have been touted by Harris allies in Congress. These proposed government mandates would eliminate market-based incentives that produce savings through competition and negotiation, hiking healthcare costs for employers and consumers by billions of dollars each year, while artificially increasing drug company profits.

Healthcare costs have already risen under the Biden-Harris administration. Government intervention would drive them even higher, making it harder for American businesses to offer cost-effective prescription drug coverage, and increasing costs for consumers and taxpayers.

Housing

Finally, Harris turned to housing costs, a fitting focus given that average mortgage rates have nearly tripled since the Biden-Harris administration took office. She proposed preventing landlords from setting "artificially high rental prices," which might sound appealing — until you consider that this means federal bureaucrats would decide what constitutes a "fair" rent.

If federal bureaucrats control housing costs, it would discourage homebuilders from entering the market. Why would builders invest their capital and time constructing homes if, after making that investment, a federal official could arbitrarily decide its valuation? Fewer homes being built would lead to even higher prices for both renters and homebuyers.

Conclusion

The consistent theme in Harris’s economic approach is clear: she believes the government knows better than the free market, and that putting the government in control will somehow lower prices.

Every leftist leader promises that just a little more government intervention will lead to better outcomes — but common sense and history tell us this approach doesn’t work. You can’t fix problems caused by socialism with more socialism. Americans should reject these reckless policies come November.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mike-pompeo-kamala-harris-would-crush-families-big-government-price-controls

News Release

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 22:14:08 GMT

Kansas Employers for Affordable Healthcare Launches to Fight Against Rising Costs for Businesses and Employees

Topeka, KS – A new organization has launched to fight alongside businesses and employees facing rising costs for healthcare.

“Employer-sponsored health coverage is under siege by policies that raise costs on businesses large and small, threaten to undermine a key job recruitment and retention tool, and erode the household buying power of hard-working Kansas employees,” saidAndrew Wiens, Executive Director of Kansas Employers for Affordable Healthcare(KEAH). “KEAH will serve as a collective voice for employers to push back against anti-competitive legislation that raises the cost of healthcare for Kansas businesses, employees, and their families.”

Employer-sponsored healthcare benefits support good health among employees and their families by providing preventative care, treatment for illnesses and injuries, and access to prescribed medications. It is no surprise that a recent survey from the Society for Human Resource Management shows employers naming health-related benefits asthe most important type of benefit an organization can offer its workers.

At the same time, “health benefit costs [are] expected to rise 5.4% in 2023,” and employers should “prepare for continued accelerated cost growth,” according to a recent article from Healthcare Finance News . Many Kansas workers who are covered by an employer-sponsored health insurance plan have recently emerged from their health insurance open enrollment period and have indeed noticed a bigger dent in their family budgets. Employers, who typically cover the lion’s share of the cost of their employees’ healthcare benefits, face the same cost escalation challenges and are bracing for the impact of future cost hikes.

“In recent years, Kansas businesses have watched their healthcare bills go up while harmful legislation continues to be proposed: implementing budget-busting coverage mandates, increasing red tape, prohibiting cost-saving practices, banning incentives to shop at cheaper providers, and issuing heavy-handed regulations of employers with self-funded health plans,” Wiens said. “KEAH applauds Kansas legislative leadership for committing to 'A Better Way' in their 2023 legislative agenda to ‘protect Kansas consumers and stop new costly mandates that drive up rates.’”

“We’ve dug ourselves quite a hole with healthcare regulations, both at the federal and state levels. While we can’t totally control macroeconomic forces and put a lid on inflation, Kansas employers, small businesses, labor unions, and associations can join KEAH to fight back against price-hiking legislation and regulations. Kansans facing mounting healthcare costs are counting on us to get the job done.”

Your voice is important. If you would like more information on our work or if you want to join our efforts, please visit us at www.keah.org .

Date:January 17, 2023

Contact:Andrew Wiens

Executive Director

785-249-1534

info@keah.org

Kansas Employers for Affordable Healthcare

800 SW Jackson St., Suite 808

Topeka, KS 66612