The perks of health care
A new investor report from S&P Capital IQ suggests that publicly traded companies could save $700 billion by 2025 if they shift 90 percent of their work force from job-based health coverage to individual insurance sold on the nation’s insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act.
Already the howls are beginning from the conservatives.
But wait, the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies are smart firms and they see value – both for them and their workers.
Neil Irwin, a senior economics correspondent for The New York Times, writes that the S&P research report is not an outlandish notion. Ezekiel Emanuel, an architect of the Affordable Care Act, has long predicted a similar shift.
Irwin and Emanuel note that while corporate savings will accrue to companies’ bottom lines, it also is a good assumption that some will end up in the pockets of American workers in the form of higher wages or other benefits. After all, employers got into the health care insurance business in the first place because they needed to attract workers.