Intel chairman Craig Barrett has made some dire predictions about the future of the U.S. job market in the face of rising healthcare costs. In 2004, it cost employers an average of $6,000 dollars to insure each employee. Sooner or later, Barrett notes, this cost will have companies sending their jobs overseas, where healthcare is far less expensive. "The [healthcare] system is out of control, it's unstable, it's basically bankrupt, it gets worse each year and all we do is tinker around the edges when what we need are major fixes," Barrett said at a conference sponsored by eHealth Initiative. He claimed that employers can influence the high cost of healthcare by only dealing with healthcare providers who follow best practices and adopt healthcare IT systems.
For more on Barrett's comments:
- read the report [1]from the Houston Chronicle
Links:
[1] http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4215672.html