One of my least favorite acts as a business executive is buying health insurance for my employees. Being  a small business I am pretty close to the individual needs and preferences of the workers, and there is just no way I can buy for so many individuals and accommodate their individual needs and desires. Health insurance should be individually owned like their other insurance products.

But the real problem is price and it is getting much more expensive.  Under the new health insurance requirements, preventive physicals are covered at 100%.  This includes heart screenings, colonoscopies, pap smears, and other screenings. This is even required on the high deductable plans where we were previously willing to pay more for out of pocket treatment including physicals.  Now thanks to Obamacare we do not have that choice.  It should be no surprise that the result is higher health insurance premiums.

The belief is that by covering preventative screening that it will save health insurance costs later.  This seems logical but it is probably a myth.  In the short term the costs must go up by the higher costs of reimbursements for physicals plus the likely probability that more people will thus get more physicals more often.  There is also the possibility that this will cause more unnecessary treatment further adding to the cost.  I would not readily assume that this higher upfront cost is balanced by any real savings in catching diseases early.  While it may potentially save a life it does not follow that by doing so it decreases overall health insurance costs.

Why not require coverage of gym memberships, running shoes, healthy food, meditation classes and other health promoting activities?

The belief is simply that the public is too stupid to take proper care of themselves and will skip physicals to save money. These are the same people who need no incentive to change the oil in their car.  The real fact is that many of those who skip physicals are the young who are at very low risk and maybe got a physical every two are three years, who now will have incentives to get one every year, increasing health insurance costs for everyone.

But the greater issue is that citizens prefer choice to government mandate. They may spend more for health care because they value it and they may be more than willing to spend their own money for physicals to hold health issuance premiums down. Just witness the growth in alternative therapies that were not covered under existing health plan.  Requiring coverage that  individuals may opt out of  just increases insurance costs (and insurance company profits) and causes many to just drop coverage countering any benefits, illusory as they may be, that the bureaucrats expected.

My fellow workers are not stupid. The vast majority of them manage their affairs and family responsibilities quite well.  They do not need Washington to treat them like idiots and increase their health care costs.

Repeal Obamacare.

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