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Employer Mandate |
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An "employer mandate" usually refers to a state or federal measure requiring that large employers provide health insurance benefits to their employees. An alternative approach is to require employers to either "play" by providing health benefits or "pay" — through higher wages, or by giving a specified sumper full-time employee, to the state or federal government so that those entities can pay for benefits.
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Estimating Costs/Controlling Costs |
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In 2006, health care spending in the United States finally topped $2 trillion. That year health care became 16% of gross domestic product. Several factors are now pushing these costs even further up, including the aging of the population, advancement of technology, the obesity epidemic and skewed incentives
within the system. That ever-rising price tag is a burden not just on government health care programs, such as Medicare; it has also put an increasing strain on companies that provide health insurance to their employees. Because the cost of health insurance keeps going up, these companies find themselves at a disadvantage compared with companies that operate from other countries where health care costs are not nearly as high.
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Expand Public Programs |
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Many plans work by expanding public programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Proponents of this approach believe that it is an easy way to get more people covered.
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Guaranteed Issue |
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Insurers must sell a policy to anyone regardless of pre-existing conditions under guaranteed issue laws. Guaranteed issue policies are often combined with community rating policies. Under "pure" community rating policies, insurers would be forced to charge the same price to every policyholder, regardless of age, sex, or any other indicator of health risk. The result of guaranteed issue policies tends to be that healthy people are charged more so that sick people can be charged less.
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Health Savings Accounts/Consumer-Driven Health |
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Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are one of the first developments in so-called consumer-driven health care. Proponents of consumer-driven health care believe that individuals must have some "skin in the game" to make smart decisions about their own health care, and that this will bring down health care costs overall. HSAs are tax-free accounts into which a consumer and/or his/her employer can deposit money that can be used to pay for health services.
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Individual Mandate |
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An individual mandate is a requirement that individuals purchase their own health insurance. Such a mandate may include some subsidies, tax credits, or other means of helping the poor to pay for premiums. Many experts believe an individual mandate is the cornerstone of health care reform because without it, many uninsured individuals seek care from more expensive settings – such as the emergency room. In addition, many people will simply not buy insurance unless they are required to. The theory is that the more people there are in the insurance pool, the cheaper premiums will be.
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Innovation, and How to Maintain It |
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The U.S. health care system has the best access to the most innovative therapies in the world. Many people forget this aspect of health care, until they are sick. Many health care proposals could dampen competition among technology developers and health care delivery organizations, meaning that fewer new medical advances will occur. There is evidence that this is already happening in Europe, where price controls are a`standard tool for controlling health care costs.
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Standard Tax Deduction |
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Today, when a company pays for an employee's health insurance premiums, that money is not subjected to federal, state, or local income taxes, or to payroll (FICA) taxes. It is as if it is a "tax free" part of a salary. Individuals can deduct their health insurance and any health care expenses that are more than 7.5 % of their income, but that is not nearly as "tax-friendly" as the benefits that employees receive when they get their insurance on the job.
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Issue Briefs 
