It seems both Katrina and Iraq have provided an excuse to forget about the health care problem. but here is an article actually in the business section of the LA Times, actually questioning whether the employer provided health care insurance model can survive. The whole premise of employer provided insurance has been cracking as companies like Wal-mart simply refused to play, or pay, and shed their low income workers to the states. the States are getting wise to this, and afew have passed laws requiring health insurance coverage, not without great opposition from small business. But wal mart competitors, big businesses in many cases are now lining up in favor of such regulation. and with the feds threatening to cut funding for health care, states have no where to turn. something will have to give, soon.
Rising Premiums Threaten Job-Based Health Coverage - Los Angeles Times: "THE NATION
Rising Premiums Threaten Job-Based Health Coverage
By Debora Vrana, Times Staff Writer


The average cost of health insurance for a family of four has soared past $10,800 � exceeding the annual income of a minimum-wage earner, according to a survey released Wednesday.

For some, this year's survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research Educational Trust was the latest sign that a relentless rise in premiums threatens to collapse the central pillar of America's health insurance system: job-based health coverage. Since 2000, premiums have gone up 73%, while wages have grown 15%, Kaiser researchers concluded.

Rising costs are forcing many businesses, especially smaller companies, to stop offering coverage and are causing some employees who can no longer afford insurance at work to buy it on their own � or go without.

'What we are seeing is an unraveling of the way we finance healthcare in the United States,' said William Custer, director for the Center for Health Services Research at Georgia State University in Atlanta. 'It is coming apart at the edges, and those edges are small business and low-wage workers. The levees are breaking.'"