Dan,
"I knew. Forty years ago."
As did I.
My accounting career, going back to the 80s, started with automating businesses that were still doing manual accounting. Novell servers, workstations, and local area networks were coming into use. I set up automated accounting systems using provided trial balances and subledgers. I usually worked alone, getting small and mid-sized companies up and running and then trained their employees.
Over the years, I talked with many owners and accounting managers, and something I saw was alarming. Over and over again, every company I worked with had one thing in common. When their annual group health insurance renewal arrived, the premium had typically increased five to ten percent, in that ballpark.
Year after year, those rate hikes outpaced inflation and consumed a bigger share (percent) of sales revenue than nearly every other expense on their books.
That spelled trouble for companies that had, for years, just absorbed the increases while still offering free health insurance for employees. I even knew one company that provided free family coverage until the late 80s.
At that rate, a brick wall was inevitable. It was just a matter of time. Something was wrong then, and it's still wrong now.
The government eventually stepped in with a grand plan called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare which was supposed to fix the system by spreading out risk and making insurance affordable for everyone. It offered federal premium tax credits (subsidies) for people who bought coverage on new state-run insurance exchanges, along with a mandate requiring everyone to have and pay for health insurance. The idea was simple. Healthy young people who often skipped insurance would now pay in, spreading and balancing costs for everyone else.
But there was a problem. Many states refused to create their own exchanges or expand Medicaid. That forced Washington to step in and build a massive federal exchange what we now know as Healthcare.gov (as a backup). It was never supposed to be the main system, but suddenly it was. That was the first wrench in the grand plan.
Then came another one, even bigger.
(continued)
