Good news for us re: Obamacare/ACA

[krill]

There is something wrong with a system that pushes you to give your employees LESS benefits and pushes them onto the government program.

What's the difference between the government offering insurance subsidies for plans purchased through a highly regulated exchange, or the government offering direct subsidies to employers with tax incentives to offer employees health insurance? It seems to me that pushing people to the exchange is a far better use of tax dollars with the advantages of economies of scale, larger risk pools, and more careful oversight of the cost and benefits.

 

[StPaulHusker]

Look at the 4th paragraph in his post. I know MANY business owners who feel the same way. I am pretty sure at this point, there are parts of our benefit package that flat out won't be allowed under the new program.

I'm not asking why many business owners feel this way. I'm asking why you feel that it pressures you to give your employees less.

You could just increase their salary proportionally to the cost of the benefit that you currently provide, right?

These are things we are doing to try to help our employees out and the law flat out says we can't do it.

What are you talking about, exactly? A health insurance option that isn't sufficient under the ACA?

And how do you offset this additional cost to your bottom line?

 

[carlfense]

Likely we will give them a bump in their pay rate to help offset the loss of the company benefit.

:thumbs

But, you know us greedy biz owners, it probably won't fully offset it. The ironic thing is, by giving them a raise, it will reduce or eliminate any chance they have of having their exchange purchased insurance subsidized by the government.

I'm trying not to ask for anything too specific . . . but subsidies are available for family incomes all the way up to $94,000. Do your employees earn more than that?

I'll let BRB speak for himself but I think when he stated it was encouraging "less" benefits, he meant less being provided by the employer and more by the government.

What do you mean? Employers weren't required to offer health insurance before the ACA, right? Many chose to do so anyways despite the costs. What is different now?

We all knew this is what the ACA would do and was obviously one of the main goals, to make people more dependent on the government and less on themselves

:blink:

 

[carlfense]

Look at the 4th paragraph in his post. I know MANY business owners who feel the same way. I am pretty sure at this point, there are parts of our benefit package that flat out won't be allowed under the new program.

I'm not asking why many business owners feel this way. I'm asking why you feel that it pressures you to give your employees less.

You could just increase their salary proportionally to the cost of the benefit that you currently provide, right?

These are things we are doing to try to help our employees out and the law flat out says we can't do it.

What are you talking about, exactly? A health insurance option that isn't sufficient under the ACA?

And how do you offset this additional cost to your bottom line?

What additional cost?

 

[StPaulHusker]

Look at the 4th paragraph in his post. I know MANY business owners who feel the same way. I am pretty sure at this point, there are parts of our benefit package that flat out won't be allowed under the new program.

I'm not asking why many business owners feel this way. I'm asking why you feel that it pressures you to give your employees less.

You could just increase their salary proportionally to the cost of the benefit that you currently provide, right?

These are things we are doing to try to help our employees out and the law flat out says we can't do it.

What are you talking about, exactly? A health insurance option that isn't sufficient under the ACA?

And how do you offset this additional cost to your bottom line?

What additional cost?

The increase in salaries

 

[carlfense]

What additional cost?

The increase in salaries

That's not additional. Re-read that line that you placed in bold above (and try to look past my grammatical errors. sigh.).

 

[JJ Husker]

Also, I want to be clear on why we will likely not continue to offer company sponsored healthcare. It is not 100% the fault of the ACA. the issue is cost, plain and simple. With premiums increasing as they were, we were headed towards eliminating the benefit already. All Obamacare did was expedite the arrival to the date we do in fact cease offering it. That has been my primary annoyance with this deal from day one. they didn't fix the absolute biggest thing that was broke (runaway care costs and premium costs) but rather made them worse. Sure some of the provisions are great for certain groups of people. Like the uninsured and the most unhealthy of our population.

Example of one of the biggest problems- uninsured people going to the hospital for routine care, not paying their bill, and the hospital passing that on to those with insurance and those capable of paying. The fix? Get a government run bureaucracy to redistribute those costs for the hospitals and add in more inefficiency and more BS funded programs like PCORA (Patient centered outcomes research- or some BS name like that). Before it was a runaway train, now it's a runaway train operating on jet fuel with a drunk engineer driving the thing. Maybe instead of thanking Obama for the gal that can't get a banana stuffed into a bottle we can thank him for this.

 

[carlfense]

Also, I want to be clear on why we will likely not continue to offer company sponsored healthcare. It is not 100% the fault of the ACA. the issue is cost, plain and simple. With premiums increasing as they were, we were headed towards eliminating the benefit already. All Obamacare did was expedite the arrival to the date we do in fact cease offering it. That has been my primary annoyance with this deal from day one. they didn't fix the absolute biggest thing that was broke (runaway care costs and premium costs) but rather made them worse. Sure some of the provisions are great for certain groups of people. Like the uninsured and the most unhealthy of our population.

Example of one of the biggest problems- uninsured people going to the hospital for routine care, not paying their bill, and the hospital passing that on to those with insurance and those capable of paying. The fix? Get a government run bureaucracy to redistribute those costs for the hospitals and add in more inefficiency and more BS funded programs like PCORA (Patient centered outcomes research- or some BS name like that). Before it was a runaway train, now it's a runaway train operating on jet fuel with a drunk engineer driving the thing. Maybe instead of thanking Obama for the gal that can't get a banana stuffed into a bottle we can thank him for this.

The two bolded complaints are interesting . . .

 

[StPaulHusker]

What additional cost?

The increase in salaries

That's not additional. Re-read that line that you placed in bold above.

There would be additional costs to your company if you increase salaries to offset giving them less in health benefits. Payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, etc

 

[JJ Husker]

But, you know us greedy biz owners, it probably won't fully offset it. The ironic thing is, by giving them a raise, it will reduce or eliminate any chance they have of having their exchange purchased insurance subsidized by the government.

I'm trying not to ask for anything too specific . . . but subsidies are available for family incomes all the way up to $94,000. Do your employees earn more than that?

I do not know the family income status of our employees but my guess is that some will be over 94K and some still under. It is a sliding scale subsidy anyways so, anything additional we pay them will reduce any possible or actual subsidy.

I'll let BRB speak for himself but I think when he stated it was encouraging "less" benefits, he meant less being provided by the employer and more by the government.

What do you mean? Employers weren't required to offer health insurance before the ACA, right? Many chose to do so anyways despite the costs. What is different now?

What is different now is that, before we chose to offer it as part of our compensation package to encourage better employees to work here and out of the goodness of our hearts to help out our employees but now, the government has made it virtually impossible to continue this benefit through small employers. Basically they have hijacked our initiative and charity and all we are left capable of is simply paying them more for their time. It's more of a psychological, feel good issue than a straightforward dollar amount impact.

We all knew this is what the ACA would do and was obviously one of the main goals, to make people more dependent on the government and less on themselves

:blink:

You can give me all the goofy blinky eyes you want but we both know it to be true, you just may not want to admit it. The whole program and track to one payer government provided healthcare is dependent upon junking the existing system and forcing everyone into it eventually. This was simply a major first step in accomplishing that. Our healthcare industry is a huge business. You don't think for one minute that our government doesn't want to have control of that system and be dipping their hand into that big ole cookie jar?

 

[carlfense]

What additional cost?

The increase in salaries

That's not additional. Re-read that line that you placed in bold above.

There would be additional costs to your company if you increase salaries to offset giving them less in health benefits. Payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, etc

Couldn't you set it so that the bottom line remains the same?

 

[carlfense]

You can give me all the goofy blinky eyes you want but we both know it to be true, you just may not want to admit it. The whole program and track to one payer government provided healthcare is dependent upon junking the existing system and forcing everyone into it eventually. This was simply a major first step in accomplishing that. Our healthcare industry is a huge business. You don't think for one minute that our government doesn't want to have control of that system and be dipping their hand into that big ole cookie jar?

No. It's about healthcare . . . and it's going to work. :thumbs

 

[JJ Husker]

Also, I want to be clear on why we will likely not continue to offer company sponsored healthcare. It is not 100% the fault of the ACA. the issue is cost, plain and simple. With premiums increasing as they were, we were headed towards eliminating the benefit already. All Obamacare did was expedite the arrival to the date we do in fact cease offering it. That has been my primary annoyance with this deal from day one. they didn't fix the absolute biggest thing that was broke (runaway care costs and premium costs) but rather made them worse. Sure some of the provisions are great for certain groups of people. Like the uninsured and the most unhealthy of our population.

Example of one of the biggest problems- uninsured people going to the hospital for routine care, not paying their bill, and the hospital passing that on to those with insurance and those capable of paying. The fix? Get a government run bureaucracy to redistribute those costs for the hospitals and add in more inefficiency and more BS funded programs like PCORA (Patient centered outcomes research- or some BS name like that). Before it was a runaway train, now it's a runaway train operating on jet fuel with a drunk engineer driving the thing. Maybe instead of thanking Obama for the gal that can't get a banana stuffed into a bottle we can thank him for this.

The two bolded complaints are interesting . . .

Hey, when the government run and funded research comes up with something that actually saves us more money than it costs us, let me know would ya? I won't be holding my breathe.

 

[StPaulHusker]

What additional cost?

The increase in salaries

That's not additional. Re-read that line that you placed in bold above.

There would be additional costs to your company if you increase salaries to offset giving them less in health benefits. Payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, etc

Couldn't you set it so that the bottom line remains the same?

Set what?

 

[carlfense]

Hey, when the government run and funded research comes up with something that actually saves us more money than it costs us, let me know would ya? I won't be holding my breathe.

What?