Remember when Obama & Co. keep yammering about how great Obamacare was going to be, and how health care coverage was going to get so much better, and how is *wasn’t* a socialist takeover and nationalization of the health care industry? How citizens who liked their current health care coverage would be able to keep it? Ah, good times, good times…
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/news/companies/dropping_benefits.fortune/index.htm
Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.
That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama’s statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we’ll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America’s employers would remain the backbone of the nation’s health care system.
Long story short… AT&T, Verizon, John Deere and Caterpillar each ran the numbers and have found that it would be cheaper to simply dump health care coverage for their employers and pay the fines instead.
The end result of this is that major companies are going to get out of the health care coverage business for their employees, and those employees will now most likely be stuck with government health care… costly, crappy, communal coverage. And it’s a good question as to *why* employers have been stuck with the requirement to cover employees at all. Are employers legally responsible for employee mortgages as well? Gas bills? Phone bills? Food bills? Why not jsut pay people their wages, and let them buy their own stuff?
But since this has been a generations-long trend, there will be millions of people suddenly dumped into the governments lap with no understanding of how to take care of themselves… and they will have little choice but to turn to Uncle Sam.
Which, I imagine, was the point all along. Some may think of this as “unintended consequences,” but I have the feeling that these are the intended consequences.
Greece, here we come…
7 Responses to “Who *Didn’t* See This Coming??”
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I think we’re just making assumptions that gov’t health care will be both costly and crappy, could happen though. I don’t see how it reflects on the administration at all that private companies will be ditching their health coverage. Wouldn’t they be opening themselves up to lawsuits from employees who have their total compensation decreased ? It’s also going to leave them vulnerable to losing employees to other companies that still offer private health insurance.
On the other hand, you don’t lose your benefits or have coverage denied for pre-existing conditions if you’re on the government plan. For a large number of people pre-existing conditions means they’d have to stop treatment (or pay extortionate rates) for a serious medical condition if they changed jobs. And a situation where you get sick or die if you change jobs is anti-Free Market and un-American.
> we’re just making assumptions that gov’t health care will be both costly and crappy
Just as we make assumptions that the sun will rise in the east and that water is wet.
> Wouldn’t they be opening themselves up to lawsuits from employees who have their total compensation decreased ?
Perhaps. But there are two points:
1) The companies aren’t depriving employees of coverage. They’re simply giving the employees the opportunity to enjoy the majesty of the government system. “If you need to sue someone, sue the government.”
2) Lawsuits would be a one-time headache, and then they’re over.
> losing employees to other companies that still offer private health insurance.
A rapidly diminishing number of companies. Companies that are paying through the ear for that coverage. Note that there’s a 40% “excise tax” on the really good, expensive coverage… which means the companies expenses will go up. Whether this means the employees pay will go down or the products prices will go up, it means that the companies paying these bills will be less competative.
> And a situation where you get sick or die if you change jobs is anti-Free Market and un-American.
How so? Americans do not have the rights to not get sick and to not die.
If you have a pre-existing condition and want to change your job, then do so. Now you get to pay your medical bills out of your own pocket. This would not be a problem… if our current medical system wasn’t so loaded down with lawyers and bloat. Get government *out* of health care, re-introduce it to a little concept called “free market enterprise and competition,” and watch prices plummet. If everyone had to pay their own bills, you bet your ass they’d price compare, and doctors/hospitals would compete.
I wil answer one question for you. Companies started offering health plans as a recruiting tool. They could say “Come work for us (or keep working for us), we will pay (all or part) of your health insurance.”
The unions saw management jobs getting this perk and they then negotiated for the union workers to get it too.
It has now grown to where people think they have a right to health care. Part of the reason health care is so expensive now is all of the money that these insurance plans have put into the system. This has made it where hospitals can charge $5 for a band-aid and $10 for an aspirin. Since the insurance company will pay at least part of that, the health providers will charge whatever they can get.
Tim – it wasn’t so bad until Medicare started. That’s when prices REALLY got out of control.
My mother works for AT&T. I work for UIUC. They’re in the hole deep, because the state is so broke that it hasn’t made payments for nearly a year. How long before I get dumped from my (actually quite good) health plan to the government plan? The only blessing is that I’m in my 20s have no allergies, never get sick, and can afford to pay my one regular major medical expense (glasses) OOP.
Remember Alan Grayson? The Republican HC plan was to not get sick, or die quickly. Well, it looks like we’re going to get the last laugh. Too bad the price is so high.
Oh, wait, Obama says the bill is already benefiting millions
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hITfom2rwHxvzXH9fMrN4pOUGrqQD9FIM6GG0
Guess we’re just selfish bastards, then.
Here is a unique thought, how about people pay for their own healthcare and the government stay the f**k out of it? Radical, I know, but there it is.
my uncle got stomach ulcers because he took a lot of Aspirin to take care of his high blood pressure..,’