Editorial: Employers abandon workers

Thursday, July 19, 2001 | 8:59 a.m.

Southern Nevada's economy has been booming for more than a decade now, but it is distressing that so many employers still don't offer health insurance for their employees. Of course, just because these workers don't have health insurance, doesn't mean that they don't get sick. When they require treatment at an emergency room, and don't have enough money to pay the bill, then the taxpayer is left picking up the tab for the employers' refusal to do the right thing.

A report presented to the Clark County Commission this week provided some insight as to how much the uninsured are costing the county-run hospital, University Medical Center. Last year UMC spent $11.4 million to care for uninsured workers, an increase of 12.7 percent since 1997. That number is just for the county-run hospital. The total doesn't include all the privately run, for-profit hospitals that also provide care for those without insurance, costs that are absorbed by all levels of government. That money, too, comes out of the pockets of taxpayers in Southern Nevada.

UMC found that the largest concentration of uninsured that came through its doors was from the construction industry. While the construction industry constitutes just 9.2 percent of the county's work force, it actually accounted for 19.1 percent of the uncompensated care. The cost of health-care coverage isn't cheap, but it is inexcusable for well-off business executives to refuse to provide such basic benefits for their workers. And as Commissioner Erin Kenny aptly noted, when corporations don't provide health care benefits to their workers, then the taxpayers end up subsidizing the corporations' profits.

Shame obviously hasn't moved some companies to offer decent health care benefits. One option that might help get the attention of at least those companies that do business with the government -- and which should receive serious consideration -- was floated by Daniel O'Shea, a spokesman for the Nevada Carpenter's Union. O'Shea suggested during Tuesday's County Commission meeting that the county should award government contracts only to companies that provide health insurance for their employees. If these private companies want lucrative, government-funded contracts, then at the very least they shouldn't make the taxpayer pay for their employees' health care costs. Such a requirement obviously isn't the solution to bring about universal health care coverage, but at least it would be a step in the right direction.