In response to dramatic increases in healthcare costs, employers are reducing benefits for workers and their families, or shifting costs to employees through increased employee contributions, co-pays and deductibles. Some employers have been forced to eliminate benefits entirely, leaving workers and their families without coverage. Some employees may never recover from the financial devastation of a major injury or illness.

In most of the country, American employers have no legal obligation to provide health care benefits to employee and their families. Instead, they provide health care benefits to attract and compensate employees, and to make up for the lack of government-sponsored health care for American workers. Limited coverage under Medicaid is available for the poorest of the poor, and Medicare is available for seniors, but employer-provided health care is needed to provide for the health care needs of American workers and their families. Other industrialized countries provide government-sponsored health care for workers and their families, but American workers must obtain health care benefits from their employers, obtain coverage on their own, or go without coverage.

Health care costs have risen dramatically during recent years, with a 13.9% increase in 2003 and a double-digit increase projected for 2004. Larger employers have responded by reducing health care benefits for employees and their families, or have shifted health care costs to employees through increased employee contributions for premiums, higher co-payments and deductibles, and increased premium costs for family coverage.

Smaller employers face higher costs for each employee than larger employers. Some have responded to out-of-control health care costs by entirely eliminating health care benefits for employees and their families. Others have used the same cost-cutting practices adopted by larger employers, but have shifted even more of the cost to employees. As a result, many employees are left without health care coverage for themselves and their families, and a single injury or illness can mean financial devastation from which employees may never fully recover.

Employers also are eliminating health care benefits for retirees, or are shifting the entire cost of group plan benefits to retirees at a time when the retirees lack sufficient income to pay the increased premiums.

Unions often respond to the health care crisis by placing more emphasis on protection of employee health care benefits than on employee wages. But union protection is not available to the great majority of American workers, who must deal with their employers on their own.

The absence of adequate health care, whether provided by employers or the government, places a heavy financial load on the backs of employees. Because of this, adequate health care for workers and their families, whether provided by employers, the government, or a combined employer-government approach, is a vitally important goal of Workplace Fairness.