A Premium Sucker Punch (The Washington Post, January 25, 2009 )
SUMMARY: Heath care cost are increasing with wages no where near close to what the catch up would be. With co-pay on the rise as well the price of heath care has some paying more out of pocket than what is covered by the employer. Also with the slowdown of the economy that has started to become a constant for many employers budgeting, health care and 401ks are the things that are getting sniped first.
TOPIC: Should the government arrange for hospitals to network to help standardize the cost of health care?
CATEGORY: Journalistic
AUTHOR: V. Dion Haynes
LOCATION: www.washingtonpost.com
ACCESSED: February 22, 2009
SUPPORT: Donna Carter, technical editor for a District consulting firm and mother; the Corporate Executive Board, networking between companies and large survey access; Enlightened Inc. a full-service technology consulting firm; Paul Fronstin, director of health research and education programs at the Employee Benefit Research Institute; Shub Debgupta senior director of the Benefits Roundtable at the Corporate Executive Board; Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland, California; Margie Fox, co-president of Maloney & Fox, a marketing firm in New York; Colleen Kelley, national president of the 150,000-member National Treasury Employees Union based in Washington; Kaiser Family Foundation; Lena Barnett self-employed; Kandice Zeman, Enlightened‘s human resource manager; Sharon Bohlman, president of Strategic Benefits Solutions in Vienna.
AUDIENCE & AGENDA: Printed by The Washington Post which circulates over five million newspapers every week but is still only part of a smaller company, The Washington Post Company, whose headquarters are in D.C. With such a large circulation the Post, along with this article, is getting both sides of the story and also giving the large number of subscribers a view of those who do not have great heath care.
USEFULNESS: This article shows both sides of the health care story. The people that are not taken care of by their health care company, as well as those who see the functionality of having a health care “saving plan.” The article is aimed at the Americans that either have very little heath coverage or have bad health coverage. The support that is given is suggestions of other ways for people to get insurance and better coverage. The “wellness programs,” that companies are switching to, is mentioned in the article. This new program works by keeping the worker healthy, introduces a high-deductible, and gives the employee a ‘health savings account.’
WORKS CITED: www.executiveboard.com, washingtonpost.com/staff, www.nlightened.com, www.ebri.org/about/team, www.ebri.org, br.executiveboard.com, br.executiveboard.com, www.google.com, www.nteu.org, http://www.nteu.org/NTEU/, http://www.nteu.org/, http://www.nlightened.com/careers/careers.html, http://www.benefitscom.com/index.htm, http://www.washpostco.com/, http://www.washpost.com/index.shtml, www.washingtonpost.com
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