Welcome to Health Wonk Review (HWR), 1/09/09

Brian Klepper

First Published on THCB

Well, here we are at the beginning of 2009. On TV we’ve learned that the unlimited spending and brilliant, if socially pathological, heroics of Dr. Gregory House, unfailingly saves his patients from unknowable complexity and the abyss of death.

Meanwhile, the rest of health care, aided largely by really excellent lobbying, continues to be buoyed, defying the relentlessly corrosive gravitational pull of waste, corruption, and a tanking economy.

Still, health care's troops are beginning to feel, in Tom Lehrer's words, like a Christian Scientist with an appendicitis. Things definitely are not going well, and this longstanding run of great good fortune could be on the downswing. Is it possible that exorbitant pricing and massive waste are NOT entitlements!

Small Business Coverage: A Report From the Trenches

Brian Klepper

First published on THCB.

John Sinibaldi, a well-respected health insurance agent in St. Petersburg, Fla., has become prominent in Florida's broker community because he counsels and services a large book of small business clients and studiously tracks the macro trends that impact coverage for this population. And he's active in the state's regulatory and legislative activities.

The other day I dropped him Jane Sarasohn-Kahn's post that reported on the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans' survey showing that most employers still want to be involved with health care. John responded with a long description of what the small employers he works with are up against. It's an illuminating, damning piece. I asked him whether I could post it, and he graciously agreed.John notes that only 36 percent of Florida's small businesses -- employers with two to 50 employees - now offer coverage. This is significant because 95 percent of Florida businesses are small. Nationally, about one-third of all employees work for firms with fewer than 100 employees.