The conference began with opening remarks by Greg Anrig, vice
president, policy, at The Century Foundation, who welcomed the audience and
speakers and Karen Davis, president of The Commonwealth Fund.

Karen Davis began by stressing the advantages of
employer-based healthcare including:

•  a large company provides a natural risk pool, with a mix of older and  younger,healthier and less healthy people; and

• lack of underwriting—no one is excluded on the basis of age or health status.

(On the issue of insurers refusing to insure people with
pre-existing conditions or charging older and sicker people more, see the healthbeatblog
post, “If We Mandate Insurance, Should 20-Somethings Pay Less?” at www.healthbeatblog.org.)

 Davis noted that,
according to a Kaiser survey, nine out of ten employers consider health insurance
important to job satisfaction. But she went on to observe that there also are
weaknesses to employer-based healthcare:

•  Instability
  that worries even insured employees. (Will their employer cut coverage? If they change jobs, will they have equivalent coverage? What if they are laid off?)

• Most  workers in small firms, as well as low-wage workers, don’t qualify for
  coverage.

With the 2008 election on the horizon, Davis noted, health
care reform is jumping to the forefront of domestic issues.

Here, she emphasizes, without “shared financial responsibility among stake-holders we will have a
difficult achieving universal coverage. The only way to move forward is
together.”

Dallas Salisbury, president and CEO of EBRI (Employee
Benefits Research Institute) then introduced the panel, “The Future of Employment Based
Insurance,” and the panelists, Carl Camden, CEO of Kelly Services, and Michael
Critelli, chairman and CEO of Pitney Bowes.

Salisbury began
by stressing that what employees want most is “health insurance.”

Ask them what their second priority is and they say “more
health insurance.”

When employees are asked if they would rather receive a
significant cash payment from their employer—as much as $10,000—they say they
don’t want to take the risk. They want the insurance.

Moreover, the youngest and healthiest employees say that if they did receive $10,000, they would
probably spend it on something other than health insurance—which would make it that
much more expensive for everyone else remaining in the insurance pool.