The Leading Business Education Network for Doctors, Financial Advisors and Health Industry Consultants

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

SPONSOR: http://www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

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Classic Definition: Employers write checks that cover most health insurance premiums for employees and their dependents. But as the late Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt PhD once explained, employer-sponsored insurance is like a pickpocket taking money out of your wallet at a bar and buying you a drink. You appreciate the cocktail until you realize you paid for it yourself.

Modern Circumstance: With health coverage, employers write the check to the insurer, but employees bear the cost of the premium — the entire premium, not just the portion listed as their contribution on their pay stub. The premium money that goes to the insurance company is cash that employers would otherwise deposit in employees’ accounts like the rest of their salary.

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/0826102549

Paradox Example: The fallacy paradox is in thinking an employer’s contribution comes out of profits. In fact, higher health insurance premiums mean lower wages for workers. Since 1999, health insurance premiums have increased 147 percent and employer profits have increased 148 percent. But in that time, average wages have hardly moved, increasing just 7 percent. Clearly workers’ wages, not corporate profits, have been paying for higher health insurance premiums. Health care costs are one — though not the only — reason wages have stagnated over the last few decades. With health insurance costs rising faster than growth in the economy, more labor costs go to benefits like health insurance and less to take-home pay. Yet the paradox that employees don’t pay for their own health insurance is widespread:

• The first reason is that individuals cannot be sure what causes their wages to change or remain stagnant for decades.
• The second reason is that employers want Americans to believe that they pay for their workers’ health insurance.
• The third reason is that there are those who profit from the employment-based system: drug companies, device manufacturers, specialty physicians and high-income individuals.

And so, they all want you to believe companies are being magnanimous in giving you insurance, but they are not!

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