Business responded, with the help of government and the health care providers. It wasn't all smooth and the shortcomings of health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations are still with us. But in a few short years, we got a pretty good handle on the complexities of health care - insurers and businesses, ie., payers, applied pressure to the providers and the consumers, i.e., you and me, and things changed. Most of us consumers pay a bigger share of the cost, which has made us more reasonable consumers. A group of Fox Cities businesses even joined to form an alliance to get a better price for their employees' health care.
Businesses find a way.
That's what makes them a powerful force for this country. They're geniuses at finding a way to solve a problem economically. It might not make all of us happy, or perhaps any of us, but they find a solution. So, now they enter 1999 grappling with the worker shortage problem. There's no demographic end in sight and the continuing solid economic growth of the country only aggravates the problem.