Zane Tankel, a wealthy owner of over 40 Applebee franchises has attracted media attention by denouncing Obamacare and claiming that it will impose such burdensome expenses on him that he will need to fire workers, limit the hours of existing workers so that they are part-time and do not qualify for health insurance coverage, and cancel plans to open new restaurants. The media reaction has understandably focused on the public rage at such a wealthy man throwing his workers under the bus. I write to make a different point. Tankel illustrates some of the reasons why the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) projections of a purported U.S. financial crisis arising from the safety net are baseless.
Tankel’s complaint is Obamacare’s “employer mandate.” Small businesses are exempt, but businesses like those Tankel owns are required to provide health insurance for their full-time workers.
“Somebody has to pay,” said Apple-Metro Chairman Zane Tankel on Fox Business Network. The Applebee’s chief added that it is unclear what Obamacare taxes, costs and fines will total, but said his restaurants will do whatever is necessary to stay in business.
Businesses criticizing Obamacare have made two contradictory arguments about the impact of the employer mandate. The CEO of Papa John’s has become infamous by arguing that the price of the pizzas he sells will go up by 14 cents.
“That’s what you do, is you pass on costs,’’ John Schnatter, founder and CEO of Papa John’s, told students at Edison State College in Naples, Fla. “Unfortunately, I don’t think people know what they’re going to pay for this.”
Other CEOs claim that they cannot pass on the costs and will therefore suffer crippling drops in profits.
“Meanwhile, many franchise owners beyond Applebee’s argue that the costs of Obamacare are just too high to stay in business. ‘I can’t tell you how many franchises say they would like to be able to provide coverage, but once they start analyzing the costs, say this isn’t going to work,’ said Judith Thorman, senior vice president for government relations and public policy with the International Franchise Association, a trade group that has opposed the health care law. ‘They’re looking at a tough business climate and this tremendous cost. It’s hard for them to deal with this law, however they decide to deal with it.’”
“Somebody has to pay” is precisely the point. Under the current U.S. system health care expenses for most Americans are paid for through private health insurance, typically from the employer. Employers are able to deduct the costs of health insurance as a business expense and employees are not taxed on the implicit income they receive in the form of the health care (nominally) paid for by the employer. There is, therefore, a substantial federal subsidy for employer health insurance programs.
Despite that subsidy, the cost of private health insurance is enormous and rising rapidly. The media has focused overwhelmingly on the projected increases in health care costs of health components of the safety net (Medicare and Medicaid), but those programs are not unique. The problem we face is health care costs – not Medicare and Medicaid.
“It is helpful to consider Medicare and Medicaid in the context of overall national health expenditures, since many of the factors affecting expenditure growth are common to all forms of health insurance. Chart 1 shows total health expenditures in the U.S. as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) from 1960 through 2010, the latest year for which we have complete historical data. The portions of total spending attributable to Medicare and Medicaid are also shown.
Health spending in the U.S. has generally increased at a significantly faster pace than the economy, rising from 5.2 percent of GDP in 1960 to 17.9 percent in 2010. The upward trend has fluctuated somewhat, depending on the business cycle (which affects GDP growth) and on faster or slower periods of health cost growth.
From their enactment in 1965, Medicare and Medicaid costs have also grown faster in most years than the economy. Medicare expenditures represented 0.6 percent of GDP in 1967 and 3.6 percent in 2010. The corresponding percentages for Medicaid are 0.4 percent, increasing to 2.8 percent. The “all other” category in chart 1 is composed primarily of expenditures by private health insurance and individuals’ direct out-of-pocket payments for health services.”
The Financial Outlook for Medicare, Medicaid, and Total National Health Expenditures
Testimony before the House Committee on the Budget (February 28, 2012) by
Richard S. Foster, FSA, MAAA, Chief Actuary, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Out-of-pocket expenses have fallen substantially, so the increase in the “all other” category is due to a very rapid increase in private insurance costs. The “all other” category rose from slightly above 5% of GDP in 1960 to over 13% of GDP in 2010 (representing twice the federal expense of Medicare and Medicaid combined). The “all other” cost category is rising at roughly the same rate as the safety net and the direct out-of-pocket subcategory has fallen sharply, which means that the private health insurance cost subcategory is larger than the combined Medicare and Medicaid costs and has been rising considerably faster than the Medicare and Medicaid.
As Tankel emphasized, “somebody has to pay” for health care. Pete Peterson and Representative Paul Ryan are trying to generate a “moral panic” about future budget deficits causing a crisis. The factor that drives this moral panic is, overwhelmingly, the rapid increase in Medicare and Medicaid expenses which the CBO projections assume will continue for decades.
Projecting that U.S. health care costs will continue to increase at roughly twice the average growth rate of GDP guarantees that federal budget expenditures will be driven by health care costs. Chart 7 of Foster’s testimony explains that what he terms the “alternative” projection is what he favors as most accurate. Under this scenario, Medicare would rise to approximately 10.5% of GDP by 2080. Chart 8 projects Medicaid expenses only out to 2020 – increasing to nearly 4% of GDP. By 2080, this implies that combined federal Medicare and Medicaid expenditures would exceed 20% of GDP – roughly 100% of the federal budget. That is absurd, a point made forcefully by Federal Reserve economists in an article entitled: AN EXAMINATION OF HEALTH-SPENDING GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES:
PAST TRENDS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS (by Glenn Follette and Louise Sheiner).
“All other” health care expenses would, under similar approaches to projections, rise to over 40% of GDP by 2080. The overwhelming bulk of these expenses would be private health insurance and state contributions to Medicaid. The first question that should arise, therefore, is which constraint would actually bite first and doom the projections. The imminent constraint is not the federal budget. The U.S. is neither a household nor a business firm. We have a sovereign currency that we allow to freely float and we borrow in our own currency. The U.S. federal government, therefore, is nothing like a nation that has joined the euro and given up its sovereign currency. Like Japan, the U.S. can create money, or if it chooses to issue debt it can do so at minimal interest rates even with a debt to GDP ratio over twice as large as the current U.S. ratio.
Businesses have to compete. Many must already compete globally and the future will increase the number of firms that must maintain global competitiveness. Foreign firms often provide no health care benefits to their workers. U.S. businesses also have to compete against small U.S. businesses that are not subject to the employer mandate of Obamacare. Decades before the U.S. federal government experiences ran into any real budgetary “crisis” the increase in health care costs that the CBO is projecting would bankrupt businesses that offered health insurance. “Somebody has to pay” – and if health care costs increase indefinitely at twice the growth of GDP no business can long survive paying such costs. The only question is how soon they will become uncompetitive and fail – and the Tankels (Applebee) and Schnatters (Papa John) of the world are claiming that we have already rendered them uncompetitive by requiring them to provide health insurance to a pool of very young workers in good health (i.e., a far cheaper pool to insure than would be the case for most professions and industries). Note that neither of their businesses faces global competition. Many U.S. industries and professions will face much more severe competitive disadvantages than restaurants do if health care expenses increase as the CBO projects.
The mass loss of U.S. competitiveness that would occur if the CBO health care expense projections proved true would mean that the CBO budget projections would be wildly over-optimistic. One of the grave but more subtle flaws in the CBO projections is that they are not “stock flow consistent.” For example, under the CBO’s projected increase in health care expenses U.S. firms would soon fail by the tens of thousands as they were rendered uncompetitive. The U.S. would fall into a Great Depression, the budget deficit would explode, and Medicare expenses would skyrocket as tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and became impoverished. Health care expenses measured as a percentage of GDP would surge as expenses increased and GDP fell sharply. The CBO projections, however, are internally inconsistent on multiple dimensions as James K. Galbraith, L. Randall Wray, and Warren Mosler explained in their Congressional testimony and paper entitled: THE CASE AGAINST INTERGENERATIONAL ACCOUNTING: The Accounting Campaign Against Social Security and Medicare.
Another example of internal inconsistency would become obvious if we increased the length of the CBO projection. Eventually, health care costs would exceed 100% of GDP under the CBO’s methodology. That is, of course, impossible because health care costs are part of GDP. The assumptions about the growth of health care expenses and GDP are not consistent.
My hope is that this article makes clear that the problem is not the federal budget and it certainly isn’t Medicare and Medicaid (or Social Security). The critical constraint is the private sector. American businesses cannot compete globally if our health care costs are placed on employers and we allow those expenses to increase indefinitely at twice our GDP. America’s reliance on a private insurance model of providing health care produces inferior health outcomes at roughly twice the expense (relative to GDP) of some developed European nations.
The paradox is that the bad news is the good news. Because the real crisis will be felt in the private sector and will force that sector to recognize that health care costs can and must be contained if they wish to survive there are better prospects that businesses will decide not to continue down a suicidal path. The private sector has the political power and marketing skills to implement a strategy that recognizes that “somebody has to pay” and proceeds to adopt proven policies that provide universal health care paid for by the government at a far lower cost than the wasteful U.S. model based on private health insurance.
THE CASE AGAINST INTERGENERATIONAL ACCOUNTING: The Accounting Campaign Against Social Security and Medicare.
http://ideas.repec.org/p/lev/levppb/ppb_98.html
Thanks, Jim, for posting this link.
Thank you so much Mr. Black, for casting a bright light on the need to move our health care into a different model. Your article seems to argue for something akin to the Canadian single payer system, which I have long advocated and which the majority of both the public and health care professionals prefer by a substantial margin. During the runup to the Congressional enactment of ACA (Obamacare) Max Baucus would not even allow any testamony to be given relating to the efficacy of single payer, although during the pre-hearing politicking, the president and lots of others said that “everything must be on the table” (be considered) if we are to get it right. So much for going beyond the lobbies to enact legislation. The ACA has been, from day one, and will be so long as it is in effect, a give away to the triumverate of health care oligarchs, the insurers, the corporate providers, and the drug companies. A great example is the fact that none of these services are truly free market. There are actual protections for each industry’s profits built into the law. Of course, this is craziness, but arises from the cravenly immoral nature of plutocracies generally and ours specifically. Of course, as you note, and actually in a sort of separate issue, the idea of the “fiscal cliff” is just an outright lie. Time for America to wake up and stop listening to the prevalent media narrative which will always favor plutocrats because the media is primarilly oligarchic in basis and nature.
Individuals pay for their own auto insurance, life insurance, renter or homeowner insurance, disability … must I go on. Health insurance should be returned to a market based product where consumers decide what coverages work for them. When consumers pay they will out of necessity take steps to control costs because over and redundant usage will increase premiums. Just like consumers avoid getting tickets … not because of the fine but the premium increases. We need to get businesses as well as the government out and return the commodity of health care back to market based. Government health care has not been so successful in outcome in most places so don’t know why you want such a model here. The true problem with health care costs has been market intervention, we need less or none of it not more.
I live in the UK and would NEVER support changing our healthcare system to the sort of disastrous system you have in the US.
No one wants the disastrous system we have in the US either. The government has intervined in the health care market in the US to the point that monopolizing protections have been given to corporations in the market space and curtailed competition that would help to keep prices in check and also so obfuscated the viewing of costs from the consumer they have no idea how to plan what services to use and not use. Health care can work and costs can be controlled in a free and open market place, but it truly needs to be free and open, which mainly means freedom from government intervention and protectionism. Health insurance needs to return to its true purpose, the coverage of catastrophic events, not coverage of every visit to a doctor and purchase of every pill. Consumers need to be able to see costs of services up front before usage, so proper decision can be made about use of those services. Total government control is not the answer.
Do you mean freedom from intervention when the federal government put up most of the money to build hospitals throughout the nation? Or maybe it was the freedom of intervention when it built and supported most of the medical schools and their teaching hospitals? Or maybe it was when the government intervened and provided research monies for the development of the polio vaccine? I keep looking for this “free market” you speak of it, but I think it is a fairy tale. I see “free markets” polluting our rivers, lakes, and land, and then leaving it to the Super Cleanup Fund to clean up the lead, asbestos and mercury dumped by the stockholders who took their dividends and ran. No, I think Professor Richard Wolff is right (google his website). If there is to be any hope for production in this country, it must be a cooperative-type of employment–where the owners of the company are also the workers and THEY get the surplus.
I see the government having to pay workers pensions because the “private market” companies (like Bain) absconded with the pension money after looting a company–driving it into the ground. Hostess was put into bankruptcy by vulture capitalists who loot the pension fund and sell off the equipment while the CEOs pay themselves millions. The bankruptcy judge ought to run the owners out and turn the whole thing over to the workers. Capitalism and privatizing “sucks” literally–sucks the lifeblood out of people, the environment, and the country as a whole. It leads to nothing but plutocracy and a wrecked commons for the rest of us. Must man always serve the economy or will the economy ever serve man?
Oh and I wouldn’t want to live in a dystopian world where there is only private health insurance either. Give me the NHS any day.
Jay, I refer you to the following recent article by Dr. Black. My intent is not to insult, but maybe to get you to take a look at how you think.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/10/ideology-trumps-science-and-blocks-regulation.html
When you are very ill and on strong medications, it is very difficult to make life changing decisions.
On the other hand, by limiting hours, more people will have jobs and unemployment will go down!
“Individuals pay for their own auto insurance, life insurance, renter or homeowner insurance, disability … ”
Yeah you can choose to buy a car or buy a house. Life insurance is for when you’re dead. Disability insurance is covered by social security. You can’t choose to not get a debilitating disease. And if you get a debilitating disease and you’re not rich and you live in a country with only private healthcare, either it bankrupts you completely, or you simply don’t get treatment if you can’t afford it (unless you’re really lucky and some charity tries to help you out a bit).
Applebees going out of business due to skyrocketing health insurance costs? Has the CBO considered the potential National cost saving on heart disease?
Y, you are so right, but some people learn only through personal pain. And even then there is a high chance they haven’t learned anything. The good education comes first, only then one can expect understanding of many things in society and economy. That is why good education isn’t a priority in some very developed countries.
Thank you! Obamacare must become Medicare!
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