In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Andrew Webber, president and CEO of the National Business Coalition on Health, spoke up on your behalf about employer costs and concerns regarding health care reform.
While Webber says he thinks the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act "presents a huge opportunity for better health, better care, better costs," he acknowledges that employers aren’t in love with law either. "To be brutally honest, do they like a lot of new regulation? No, they're business people," he told the magazine.
Sums it up well, I think.
Most interesting to me were Webber’s comments about the potential future of the employer-based system: “Big picture, what worries me is the president said, ‘If you like your current coverage, we won't touch it.’ Individuals with jobs enjoy getting health insurance through their employer. But there is no question that with the new regulation, more employers are asking the question, ‘Are we going to stay in the game?’ Maybe we're moving to a system and people get a voucher and they find insurance on the exchanges. That worries me.”
I thought Webber’s comments were spot-on, and agree with him that the president’s “If you like your coverage you can keep it,” comments could come back to haunt him in a big way — up there with “I am not a crook,” and “Read my lips: No new taxes.”
But as always, I want to know what you think.
