Every fall approaching Halloween, millions of employees get an added fringe benefit they don’t ask for but they really need. I refer to the flu shot.
On flu shot day, they roll up their sleeves, pay a tiny fraction of the $20 to $25 employer-subsidized dose and get plugged by a friendly RN in hopes the vaccine matches and blocks the latest bug so they can avoid the average seven to 10 days of illness and missed work.
For those not among the 60 percent of major employers that last year offered subsidized flu shots, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, and the self-employed, unemployed and retired, affordable flu shots were annually available at a local grocery, drugstore, physician’s office or public health clinic.
Most Americans took the shot for the simple reason that, with a few notable exceptions over the last 50 years, flu shots work. Workers and employers found keeping the flu at bay maintained productivity and limited sick leave.
In 2003, for the first time in 13 years, I participated in this mass inoculation. But this year I will return to flu shot abstinence out of respect for federal guidelines on who should receive doses of the drastically limited U.S. supply of vaccine. I am not yet 65, far from being an infant, don’t work in health care, am not sick with heart or respiratory disease, nor am I a member or employee of Congress, whose attending physician said he’ll inoculate any of them, no questions asked.
I will not jump aboard the next Greyhound bound for White Rock, B.C., to nab a dose before all Canadians get their shots from their country’s ample supplies, which ironically are coveted by U.S. public health officials who still won’t approve a prescription drug import law from our northern neighbors.
I will be taking a big chance, along with many others whose employers or their own self-employment does not provide them sick leave.
There’s little doubt the flu vaccine shortage will increase employee absenteeism. The flu strikes 10 percent to 20 percent of Americans in a typical winter even when vaccines are readily available to all.
With the U.S. vaccine supply cut in half, most employers are shelving their employee flu shot plans and donating any supplies to covering the most vulnerable.
They do so knowing that employees will be far more at risk of becoming infected. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found inoculated employees reported over 40 percent less use of sick days and 44 percent fewer respiratory-related doctor visits.
This year’s flu shot shortage adds another weakening of employer-subsidized health care in the United States. This is being reinforced as millions look at their annual open enrollment packets to learn that their out-of-pocket costs are soaring far beyond inflation.
If my family’s new enrollment packets are any indication, workers will be facing 8 percent to 15 percent premium increases, fewer plan choices as employers streamline coverage to earn bigger discounts from carriers, even higher dependent costs, and co-pays jumping to $25 for each health care professional visit.
A new wrinkle may be the addition of an offered health savings account, a pretax employee contribution plan that usually combines a tax-free or tax-deductible savings plan and a high-deductible insurance policy. Workers pay routine health expenses out of the savings account, using the insurance to cover catastrophic and expensive coverage.
Popular among the young and healthy, health savings accounts aren’t as new as billed by proponents. They have been around since the early 1980s, but never gained traction because all savings had to be spent during a calendar year. Savings can now be rolled over if not used.
Yet, health savings accounts do absolutely nothing to reduce out-of-pocket health care costs like standard group-discounted plans do.
In California, an initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot would just say no to the further uncoupling of health care from employer-employee relationships. A vote for Proposition 72 would keep in force California’s State Health Insurance Act, which requires employers of more 200 to provide health care coverage and cover 80 percent of its cost.
Critics, mostly business interests, placed the initiative hoping voters would say no and repeal the law they say will add to already skyrocketing health care costs they simply can’t afford. The result will be businesses leaving the state, costing thousands of workers their jobs and the health care coverage that comes with them.
Again, as the dynamics of workplace health care coverage shifts and turns, stay tuned.
Write Eric Zoeckler at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206 or e-mail mrscribe@aol.com.
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