We Have A Problem: Health Care

June 6, 2009

When we first started Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery in 2001, we chose to begin a health insurance program paid for by the business. I was a consultant with no health insurance at the time and Bev was covered by her previous employer, until they decided to close their furniture business. We started with a program that had low deductibles and cost us about $500 a month. Over time the premiums went up to $750. When the premium was due to go to $875 a month, we raised the deductible and agreed to cover the first $1,500 of major medical expenses for the same premium, $750 per month.

I started driving a school bus for 5 hours a day three years ago. I love the kids. It’s like being a grandfather to 90 kids and we are eligible for health insurance with better benefits and for $750 a month paid pretax from my driver’s wages. We moved coverage from our furniture business saving close to $1,000 a month.

We are happy to have the health coverage. When I had prostate cancer surgery, the bill was $25,000 and our obligation was about $1,500. as I recall.

As retailers, we want to take care of our employees, but health insurance is a very spendy proposition. We have little control over the premiums and its share of SG&A is increasing rapidly. For us, we have employees, but none work enough hours to qualify for health insurance, so they have to find their own way or go without. Today, CNN Money & Main Street has an article about this subject titled Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies.

Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

I’m no liberal and I would be the first to look to the market to solve our health care problems, however I think it is unconscionable that our health care system can do so much damage to us financially. We have a problem in this country that no other major country in the world has. We have some millions of people with no health insurance for many reasons, we have a huge burden on our businesses and we have citizens fearing bankruptcy if they get sick. This problem needs a solution and I suspect both liberals and conservatives will have to compromise for the good of our country.

It’s time for a change!

Thoughts? You can comment directly, email me at landfair3554@comcast.net or follow me @landfairfurnitu.

Posted by Mike Landfair on June 6, 2009 | Comments (2)

June 13, 2009

In response to: We Have A Problem: Health Care
Mike Landfair commented:

Furniture person, I agree with the first part of your response. Most of us can't self-insure. My question to you as you damn the health providers, is how much of the problem has been brought on by the government's rules and regulations and the tort attorneys? Will more government fix the problem? And how will the proposal to take away the ability of business to write off health care for employees, give us better care or even universal care? Seems to me, if you can't write off the expense, you will stop providing this benefit, throwing even more people onto the backs of the taxpayer. I don't know if this is a universal "right". It is in the interest of our country to have healthy citizens who have affordable health care.

June 12, 2009

In response to: We Have A Problem: Health Care
furniture person commented:

I am a liberal, and I've had enough. The system is broken. We need national, single-payer health care now. Each of us is 1 job loss away from losing everything if anyone in our families has a health crisis--or a pre-existing condition that the health insurers who are the apex of power in this sick system deign not to cover them, which they do handily and readily. It's criminal. I'd like to see all the health insurers out of business--tomorrow. I'd much rather phone the gov't, rather than make one more call to these trillion- dollar profiteers on our health. Access to decent health care is a universal human right. Period.