Could you summarize John Sinibaldi's description of the challenges faced by small employers in Florida when it comes to buying health care? Answer according to: John Sinibaldi, a well-respected health insurance agent in St. Petersburg, Fla., has become prominent in Florida’s broker community because he counsels and services a large book of small business clients and studiously tracks the macro trends that impact coverage for this population. And he’s active in the state’s regulatory and legislative activities.
The other day I dropped him Jane Sarasohn-Kahn’s post that reported on International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ survey showing that most employers still want to be involved with health care. John responded with a long description of what the small employers he works with are up against. It’s an illuminating, damning piece. I asked him whether I could post it, and he graciously agreed.
Florida businesses are small. Nationally, about one-third of all employees work for firms with fewer than 100 employees.
they were part of the coalition that killed the Clinton reform effort.
Finally, Mr. Sinibaldi’s message should drive home a key point, echoed by Shannon Brownlee and Zeke Emanuel in the Washington Post over the weekend and Bob Laszewski’s post yesterday.
Often the discussions on sites like this are dominated by people who understand health care’s problems deeply but abstractly. For John and his employers, buying health care is a stark, concrete problem that boils down to cutting care arrangements that are affordable for the employers and employees. As he describes it, it’s an increasingly impossible task.
I agree wholeheartedly with Brian’s assertion (and Maggie’s chorus) that this problem is NOT entirely an insurance issue. While it’s true that getting medical insurance in Florida is outrageously expensive, the real reasons for this stem from the fact that it’s almost impossible to run a health care establishment now. Doctors everywhere pay huge premiums for malpractice insurance and are literally buried in administrative paperwork. The profession of doctoring needs to be simplified foremost, back to a field that is rooted in care and compassion, not greed and intellectual prestige.
top will be meaningless unless we have structural reforms that contain costs and lift the quality of care.
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