Businesses Can't Wait for Washington

Every day Washington drags out the health care debate, the American economy pays. Health care costs at Stew Leonard's - a Connecticut supermarket chain - have jumped 14 percent in the past year:

Jill Leonard Tavello can't wait for Washington to solve this problem.

Tavello said the Stew Leonard's storeshave started holding in-house health screenings for their 2000 employees. They're offering them incentives to get annual checkups.

"If you get a physical at the beginning of every year, we'll give you $250 to put towards your deductible" Tavello said.

"This isn't just a health issue, it's a business issue," Mason said.
"It's a business issue," Tavello said.

Health insurance premiums for employers skyrocketed 131 percent in the past decade.

As business pours more profits into health care, Richard Quinn said, "There's nothing left to hire qualified employees. There's nothing left to go out and market the business."

According to one survey, every 10 percent increase in healthcare costs the economy more than 120,000 jobs.

"Health care is broken," said Harris Rosen "It's not working. It's too expensive."

Rosen runs a medical center that serves 4,500 people - all employees of his hotel business. Rosen, who owns 7 hotels around Orlando, grew so frustrated with the system that he set up his own primary care clinic. The price: $12 million a year. It's about half, he says, what it would cost him in a traditional insurance plan.

"If you take our savings and extend it to 200 million people who are working, now you're looking at savings approaching a trillion dollars," Rosen said.

As Washington tries to write a new prescription for healthcare, American business says it can't afford to be left in the waiting room.

:

[abaur2]

Billions of USD are cheated out of the current healthcare system. Why are we not fixing this serious problem. Cheaters should be punished very harshly like 30 years of hard labor not jail. Fix the current system by hiring more qualified fraud investigators, make the system fool proof. We can save billions instantly. What is Washington waiting for?

[IndepTex20]

The problem is this. The headline should be:

"Businesses Can't Wait for Washington to Get the Hell out of the Way"!!

[johnny465]

American policys suck and now it's gettting into the American people.
I'm Canadian and in ****** Thailand now and a guy from Boston took a girl home and she robbed him of everything so he was going to be a few days to get money wired to him from USA -- So being a nice guy from Canada to my niegbour to the south i took him to eat and gave him some money to get by next day i bought him breakfast again and he wanted more money. I asked him what he did with the money i gave him and he was drinking beer---so I thought that was stupid when you have no money so i gave him half as much to get by that day. Well the American played me for a sucker and never came back to pay me back.
This is real low for American people ---Its no wonder there hated around the world so much.
I thought it was just the American policys and not the people of the USA but i was wrong. I will never help a American from the USA` again

[peregrine3]

Kind of reminds me of the summit the other day when the president tried to keep in topic rather than listening to irrevelant whinning. Having been to Bangkok I know people are there for health seminars, unless its idenify rare std's and people such as yourself allowing a panhandler to secure a few baht from you hardly relates to americans or american policy which is dysfunction enough without your help. I must not have enough to do answering this mindless blog obviously influenced by lead fermented Mekong whisky.

[CBSisCommunist5]

Rising jobless claims reflect weakening recovery (AP) - 5 hours ago
AP - Layoffs are no longer dropping as they were in the final months of last year, reinforcing fears that the jobs crisis will weigh down consumer spending and the economic rebound.