The big health systems having governing bodies lead by physicians and nurses. Technocrats do not dictate standards of care nor is pay for performance really a thing. Physicians bitching about their EMR, yeah well, there are still people out there who wish for the days of XP and don’t understand why they have to have two step verification and can’t just hook-up their personal hardware to internal networks and call it secure.
On the other hand your PCP push back on the use electronic records is part of the problem. We spend billions each year using couriers to transport X-ray film and other records from the doctors office to the hospital etc.
It is actually a big part of the reason we do so many damn tests, it is often easier, almost always quicker, and sometimes even cheaper, to redo a test even if the same test like an MRI was performed two days across town.
The lack of good records I am sure has a big impact on the quality of care.
I know entrepreneur who’s company spent the last decade simply trying to develop a HIPPA complaint email, instead of the user-hostile way that my HMO tries to communicate medical information with me.
But your employer doesn’t.
Right. Never meant to say they did. Frankly, I care more about my wallet than that of my boss, and as we’re looking at the cost to the insured (or at least I think we were?), that’s what I was addressing.
And this is the part most Americans have not figured out yet. They think they have good, inexpensive healthcare. They don’t. The real costs don’t show up as a line item deduction on their paychecks, as taxes do.
I have a theory that, if everybody knew just how much their wages were depressed due to the excessive costs borne by their employers, we could move this debate forward at a very fast pace and end up with a reasonable system.
I think this has led as much as anything to crying about how expensive ACA insurance is. With the recession and ACA basically hitting at the same time people who didn’t understand what their employers were already paying for health care thought they were getting crushed by the ACA when they suddenly found themselves having to pay a larger part of the costs.
I have a theory that if the subsidized portion of health care was suddenly lifted from employers, our wages wouldn’t see an equivalent bump. Just a theory, of course.
That said, I wholeheartedly agree that health care shouldn’t be a part of employer compensation. It should be single payer.
Your paystubs don’t show your employer contributions? Mine does. I think most of them have.
Mine does as well.
My YTD employer contribution is $10,170.85
At my last job, we got a yearly benefits summary which included the employer contributions to our benefits package. It was always a high number!
Nonetheless, @Oghier is right in the sense that most people are interested in how much they pay out of pocket for their health care. It’s a behavioral economics thing…the majority of people want to pay less, even if they’d actually end up ahead by paying more and getting back benefits in some other area. (Same thing applies to lower taxes, by the way.)
As a general rule, most pay stubs don’t show employer contributions for health care. Some employers do this but most do not.
One of the small things we should definitely do in regard to health care is make this disclosure mandatory. I believe one citizens know more about the real cost of healthcare, the sacrifices and compromises necessary for true health care reform become more palatable.
Employers are currently spending about 5% of GDP on roughly half of the US population for health care which means employers are spending roughly $6,000 per year per covered person (note that’s covered person not covered family). That’s what is being spent now, and a lot of Americans don’t realize that.
Are you sure about this? I am 99.9% certain at least 90% of my employers who offered healthcare gave me the employer contribution amount. Right now my employer pays almost 1600 a month. Before that it was also very high and they showed it. The only time I can’t remember if that was given to me was when I was a teen and didn’t care.
My understanding is that relatively few private employers disclose the amounts paid for health care, but a fair number of public entities do.
I honestly can’t recall the last job I had which didn’t, but I’m just anecdotal data.
PS - they don’t share costs for real estate/electricity per person, however.
Hmm, I looked it up and it turns out the ACA requires it be disclosed yearly on the W2. However, I still don’t recall seeing it disclosed on regular paystubs.
I’d have sworn my paystub listed the employer contribution, but I just looked for it and can’t find it now.
My last three employers were private. It makes no sense for them not to show you. That’s part of your salary. they should want employees to know what value they’re getting working there.
I don’t have aggregate data either, but this is standard for the payroll software we use today. Small businesses, well maybe they don’t have the system to report it easily or something.
You made me realize I don’t actually know how one imports/exports data. People bring in stuff on paper, or occasionally a CD with some video file of a cath or something.
I looked at my EMR and there’s CDD import/export option. Nobody’s ever asked to send a CDD. They just ask for a fax number. Now I’m wondering, how are you supposed to transfer CDDs? You can’t use email. Copy to a USB key and physically transport?
But yeah it would be reallllly nice to have a sort of instantchat for patients. They can take pictures of their insurance cards or whatever documents they want filled out so we can give an answer without them having to bring it in.
Those register portals to get email things are beyond the ability for a lot of patients to do.
By some interpretations of HIPAA is may be illegal to send a text reminding the patient they have an appointment the next day. The example I’ve seen is that say a coworker passes by and sees they have an appointment with an oncologist, they’ll suspect they have cancer.
From W2 data, looks like my employer pays roughly 24k for my family insurance. My contribution is another 5k or so.
There are tons of ways you could securely transport it over the internet. I would expect the healthcare industry uses exactly none of them.