The Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs that lead companies measuring about 1/3 of the US stock market, released a report this week with some pretty daunting numbers. The study was titled “Health Care Reform: The Perils of Inaction and the Promise of Effective Action”.

For instance, take a look at this graph.

Here are the key findings from the report.

Key Findings

• Without significant marketplace reforms, if current trends continue, annual health care costs for employers will rise 166 percent over the next decade, from $10,743 per employee today to $28,530 by 2019[1].

• These runaway costs, combined with a $56 billion cost shift to payors from uncompensated care, would cripple the employer-based system that currently provides coverage for the majority of Americans and their families.

• If nothing changes, by 2019, total health care spending will reach $4.4 trillion, consuming more than 20 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product.

Now, the Roundtable is no leftist organization trying to promote healthcare. They are solidly on the right in matters of finance, economics and the budget. So, that they are weighing in at this point is important. Here you have a key Republican constituency, corporate America, saying that the costs of inaction are enormous. The implication may also be that doing anything is better than nothing. In any case, if the Roundtable thought the current plans on the table (Senate Finance and the House Energy & Commerce bills) were problematic, they would out lobbying hard against them. They aren’t – and here we have evidence that they are pushing for action in spite of Republican criticism.

It’ll be interesting to see how that constituency plays out through next year’s Congressional elections in terms of financing.

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