Yeah, This Is a Surprise
Analysts are now predicting that nearly all private employers will drop health insurance as an employee benefit during the next 10 years. Nearly all, as in 80 to 90+% will cease providing health insurance.
The reason? Yeah, you guessed it: ObamaCare. Here’s a quote from the above article:
The research firm S&P IQ predicts less than 10 percent of those who get insurance at work will still get it there ten years from now.
“The companies will really be hard pressed to justify why they would continue to have to spend the kind of money they spend by offering insurance through corporate plans when there’s an alternative that’s subsidized by the government” said Michael Thompson, head of S&P IQ.
Even a former adviser to President Obama, Zeke Emanuel, predicted less than 20 percent who now get employer-provided insurance will still get it ten years from now. He wrote in his book “Reinventing American Health Care” that “By 2025 few private-sector employers will still be providing health insurance.”
In words: cost transfer. They can get someone else to pay for it.
Can’t really blame the employers for doing that, either. They’re in business to make money. If they can cut costs without hurting their long-term bottom line – they will.
Providing insurance for their workers typically costs employers a buttload of money. Family coverage typically costs in the $15,000 per worker range annually. (Yeah, it really is that damn expensive. The “employee share” most people pay is only a small part of the total cost of that insurance coverage. Your boss kicks in the rest.)
Previously, employers and employees shared that cost, with employers ponying up most of it. Under ObamaCare, employers are finding it’s cheaper to drop coverage, raise wages – and let someone else pick up the tab.
Want to know who that “someone else” is gonna be? Look in the mirror. That would be the “US taxpayer”.
You and me.
And if you think taxes will stay the same or go down after that starts happening, well, I’d like to talk to you about a great deal on this this bridge right over here . . . .
We need to kill this abominably asinine idea called ObamaCare as soon as we can. With fire. And then bury the ashes in quicklime.
Category: Health Care debate
Hondo…Here-Here. Nothing to add. Thank you.
I don’t think it’s any great secret that “Obamacare” is a way of pushing everyone into a single payer system.
I thought Obamacare required employers of more than 50 full time employees to provide health care? Or is the thought that paying the fine will be less costly to the employer than complying with the law?
In many cases that’s it exactly. For many companies paying the fine is cheaper than providing the “Obamacare” mandated insurance.
ArmyATC…That’s correct, especially for large corporations like the one I retired from, Verizon. They’ve already done away with any pension plans they had and “contribute more to the employees’ 401K”, which amounts to about…nothing. Their spin, it that now your benefits are more mobile, in the event we can you, which we are trying every day to do.
When I worked for the company back in the day, their motto was, “We want to be the easiest company to do business with”. Now it is, “We’re not happy…till you’re not happy”. Applies to customers and employees alike.
While I can certainly see and understand that aspect of it,… I actually do like the mobility aspect. For me, I stayed with my employer for a long while longer than I wished to simply because I had health coverage for what would amount to a pre-existing condition had I moved. And since I tend to be mobile, I like a 401K vs. a ‘vested after N years’ pension.
I completely understand that I’m possibly in the minority on this, but it isn’t just doublespeak from the companies. Some people do want that.
That’s my two cents worth of 401K investments.
LC I do agree. When I was in the company there was a vested pension and a 401K program. I stayed through layoffs and RIFs to maintain my pension and healthcare for me and the family. After a certain point in years, the better years I might add, it became too much to walk away from. But I understand those younger and the advantages of the mobility of their 401K. My only issue is when I talk to the younger workers now I always tell then to fully invest in the 401K from the beginning and get use to having it out of their pay and budget. Sadly, many cannot see the benefit of that at their age versus a new car or other toys. Young folks live in the now a lot and cannot look down the road at retirement years. Then at about 40 or so, if they last that long in the company, it is sort of late to start building for a liveable retirement. Never too late to start but start as soon as possible.
That pretty much happened with my old employer also. It was a great company when I first started working for them back in the late 80s. Excellent health insurance, great retirement benefits, excellent merit raises, and a wonderful vacation plan. But over the years, as the company got bigger the merit increases were cut dramatically (from a high 0f 7% twice a year to a max of 3% once a year), the retirement plans changed, and I was paying more for insurance. It quite literally got to the point where I was making less than when I first started. I had to retire in 2007, right after I got my twenty in.
Martinjmpr…Unless those employers cut their employees back to part time, I think 32 hours per week or less. Which is already happening big time.
Not going to say ‘tolja so’, but I did wonder about how long it would take.
So was the entire purpose of howbadmycareis to drive the health insurance industry out of business? I can’t think of a more fraud-ridden enterprise than Medicare, and the VA doesn’t take Medicare as payment, you know.
I think that’s just what it was for. Obama is on record as wanting a single payer system. He gets it by default with the ACA.
This is what happens when people are too lazy/stupid/uninformed to do for themselves and expect government to “fix it.”
Uh, dipshits? GOVERNMENT CREATED THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! What makes you think their fix won’t fuck things up that much worse?
GOVERNMENT CREATED THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
Exactly and government interference leads to too many distortions in the health care market.
If consumers were “shopping” for health care in the same way that we shop for anything else then we could compare prices and the market would offer alternatives (right now people are doing this with medical tourism).
But government interference distorts the health care market and makes it more difficult for that market to function correctly, so we shouldn’t be surprised that health care is so expensive.
And now the political class wants to try and “fix” all that, which means that they want to accumulate more power and further distort the market so that individuals become more dependent on the government.
But they are able to convince enough of the public that they are “watching out for the little guy” so they have no incentive to stop interfering.
People who pay attention know what the government’s motto is, “If it ain’t broke, fix it till it is.” Why anyone would think that government can “fix” healthcare is beyond me.
Sorry to come late to the post. But, I agree, Gubbment created this mess in the first place, dating all the way back to The Sainted (koff koff) FDR (remember him? The socialist who extended the Great Depression to/by 8 years with all his Big Gubbment intervention and SCOTUS packing).
During WWII, he decreed (sound familiar?) that no pay raises were to be given in the civilian sector for those working in the military industries. But what those industries COULD do was to offer health care and retirement bennies. And the practice has continued ever since.
So, thanks a f**kin’ lot for a whole lotta nuttin’, you statist fascist asshole. I hope you’re burning in the depths of hell that you so richly deserve.
Personally, I’d prefer a big raise and purchasing my own private insurance to that provided by my employer or by the government. If it were really a free market, I could shop around for a plan that meets my needs, not full of mandated coverage for things I don’t need – birth control, pregnancy, mental health, drug counseling, etc – that I then wouldn’t have to pay for.
But that’s not realistic since the Feds and the states mandate coverage for everything but the kitchen sink, and Obamacare is destroying the private insurance market.
Health insurance should be like any other product, you buy it yourself.
Free Market?
That is the problem. We have long since left a real Free Market. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many Government fingers meddling in it these days, always looking to tweak this or that – all they wind up doing is screwing it up.
Big government types are always optimistic, if nothing else, that they can “fix” a given problem. More’s the pity …
For some reason when a civilian leader has to retire/change positions (to spend more time with his/her family), they are said to take the fall for the failures of others.
Yet when a CO/XO/Senior Enlisted receives a “loss of confidence” from his superior, they are canned quicker than crap thru a goose. Sometimes it is a well earned relief but it can also be caused by their failure to train competent crews. So if a leader fails for whatever reason, change leaders. BZ
And now we’ll get the VA system on a national scale for everyone….
Jim Angle must have missed this story though.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/us/irs-bars-employers-from-dumping-workers-into-health-exchanges.html?_r=0&referrer=
Where the IRS says the taxes and fines will be astronomical for anyone that attempts to dump thier workers into the exchanges. So the employers must maintain or be subjected to invasion of criminal auditors to prove the costs outweigh the fines. We all know what the truth is about the IRS and forcing compliance.
I’m sending all future healthcare bills to this little shit in the photo: http://lonelyconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Obamacare-signing.jpg
He wanted it.