The answers for employers is to get government out of the health and insurance business all-together and let the free market thrive.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Down-with-the-health-insurers-8102155-53146107.html

Excerpt:

“A freer market might yield a more retail-oriented health-care market in which insurance is used more as insurance–guarding against large, unexpected expenses–and less as a way of pre-paying for health care. Such insurers would have to actually compete on price and on quality of service. Current law disadvantages such plans.”

“Too often–as with last fall’s bailouts–Republicans and conservatives practice pinstripe protectionism: worrying about the fate of a profitable industry.”

There is another analysis of the Whole Foods example in a Wall Street Journal article here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

The guts of the solution in that article:

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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Bottom line: There are solutions, but our governmental system is set up to protect the money interests, not the People. I’ll be writing soon about the Big Pharma aspect to this.

It is the People who need to demand “change” allowing for a free market to thrive and not expect Government to solve their problems at an even greater taxpayer expense. That would be, and has been (Medicare) a recipe for disaster.

http://www.rwjf.org/healthreform/product.jsp?id=45408

Excerpts:

A recent study by Trust for America’s Health focused on community initiatives and found that an investment of $10 per person per year in proven programs to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and prevent or stop smoking could potentially save nearly $18 billion annually in 10 to 20 years.

A recent survey, commissioned by Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that more than three-quarters of Americans support increasing funding for prevention programs. That support was shared by Republicans, Democrats and independents.

In fact, prevention was rated higher than all other health care proposals, including providing tax credits to small businesses and prohibiting insurers from denying coverage for preexisting conditions.