Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs whose companies represent more than 10 million employees and provide healthcare coverage for more than 35 million Americans, last week unveiled Health Care Costs in America: A Call to Action for Covering the Uninsured, which includes the organization’s principles for healthcare reform. Business Roundtable is also a founding member of Divided We Fail, a national effort with AARP and SEIU designed to engage healthcare consumers, elected officials, and the business community to find broad-based, bipartisan solutions to healthcare and long-term financial security issues.
Calling for a combination of private market reforms and changes in government programs, the Business Roundtable’s principles assert, among other things, that all Americans must have access to affordable coverage, that they have a responsibility to obtain coverage (catastrophic coverage at a minimum), and that safety nets play an important role and low-income individuals may need subsidies.
“These principles are based on the premise that the employer-based healthcare system is valuable, and the CEOs of Business Roundtable are committed to maintaining and improving it,” said Mike McCallister, CEO of Humana and chairman of the Business Roundtable’s healthcare task force. Read the principles.
