WASHINGTON — By leaving buses idled and supermarkets struggling to stay open, striking transit and grocery workers have sent a message across Southern California: The growing cost of private health insurance has become a serious problem.
But angry as it is, the message has been nearly drowned out in Washington by a chorus of other health-care coverage concerns. As a result, lawmakers have given little attention in recent years to the cost of private insurance plans.
Instead, they have worried about shoring up the finances of the giant Medicare system. They have been negotiating over a new prescription drug benefit for seniors. And they have been trying to help the 43 million Americans who have no health insurance.
The rising cost of private health plans "has been like a stepchild to all the other problems," said Len Nichols, a health economist with the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change. "Everyone knows it's there, but no one wants to talk about it."
Democratic presidential candidates have made health insurance affordability a central issue, but their plans are being debated on the campaign trail, not in Congress.
"I wish I could say to you they are doing something, but to date there have been no specific proposals out of the administration or from Congress that really deal with the problems of cost containment," said Patricia Q. Schoeni, executive director of the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes businesses, unions, religious groups and others.
Some health-care experts are not even sure the complaints of the California strikers should be high on the Washington agenda.
"The bigger problem is people at the low end of the scale who don't have enough dough for insurance at all," said Stuart Butler, a health policy specialist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "I'm less concerned about [striking workers] in California who are ticked off that their employer can't keep adding 20% to their total compensation.
"I'm sorry for them, but that has nothing to do with the federal government," he said. "That's a negotiating issue for them."
Mechanics for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority walked off the job early Tuesday in a dispute over who should pay for rising health insurance costs. Union workers at major Southern California supermarket chains went on strike or were locked out over the weekend: Among key issues in that dispute is an employer proposal to trim health benefits.
