Many of the requirements released in the latest House version of health care reform are similar to proposals previously detailed in the Senate but with stiffer penalties for employers.
Employers with 25 or more employees, under the bill’s provisions, would be required to provide health coverage to employees or pay an 8 percent payroll tax. A similar mandate in a Senate bill would charge employers who do not provide coverage $750 per full-time employee per year.
Even at 8%, employers could opt out on employees making $50,000 for $4000 per year. The average cost(2008) for a family of four is now $12,700. Employees only pay $3400. That leaves $9300 for the employer to pay. Why wouldn't employers do this? Even if they had to give employees a raise(taxable) to cover some of the difference, they wouldn't have to deal with rising health care costs ever again.
The annual premium that a health insurer charges an employer for a health plan covering a family of four averaged $12,700 in 2008. Workers contributed nearly $3,400, or 12 percent more than they did in 2007.2 The annual premiums for family coverage significantly eclipsed the gross earnings for a full-time, minimum-wage worker ($10,712).
If there is a public option plan, we will all be forced into it eventually. Of course, that is Obama and the Democrats plan.
Tsongas Health Care Forum
Tsongas must be ignorant, nothing else explains the answers she gives.
ReplyDeleteWhy do employers offer health insurance today? Why don't they just pocket that money?
ReplyDeleteEasy: it gives them a competitive position against rival employers. That's why they call it a "benefit". A good benefits package is something that might entice someone to come work for your company, instead of your competitor's.
And that competitive advantage isn't going to disappear with healthcare reform.
"Dumping" employees anywhere will not likely pay off for employers in the long run, if they can't get employees.
se they couldn't see a doctor!!!!!! The emergency rooms see patients who cannot afford a physician and are not allowed to turn people away. So, to say that people die because they cannot see a doctor is just purely stupid.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time that I came across your blog. In it you said that you are "Doing the job the mainstream media won't" do. I fully subscribe to the fact that our mainstream media is not doing its job and not running pertinent stories on Obama. We tend to expose everyone else, but not Obama! Anyway, could you look at my websites and write to me via e-mail and tell me what you think.
ReplyDeletehttp://watchmansclapper.wordpress.com
E-mail: guoclan at yahoo dot com
HIM Yao Sui - Hawaii, HI and Washington, DC
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MY QUESTION TO YOU AND TO ALL OF YOUR READERS IS: Do good guys, even Christians and people who believe in the Christian god, finish last and as losers? While people like Obama and David Axelrod benefit from the lies and distortions being told?
Consider what I am going through as given above. Being a person of Hebrew ancestry and having one's family overtaken in pre-Biblical times by Nimrod. Coming to America in the 1870 only to be abused by police and government officials. Being a Christian and having one's home church blast you and having government authorities damn your good name. Not being able to find gainful employment and having government at your back continually.
Sometimes, I cry every night due to the problems that I face in America as no one seems to want to help or care for my safety and security while I am a temporary resident in your nation. Obama refuses to grant me Secret Service protection and protections legally afforded to me by law, US and the Vienna Convention On Diplomatic Relations. It seems as if Obama ends up always being lawless. I wonder why this nation continually supports law breakers and allows a true prince to go hungry to the very point of death!?
Diogenes said...
ReplyDelete"Why do employers offer health insurance today? Why don't they just pocket that money?
Easy: it gives them a competitive position against rival employers. That's why they call it a "benefit". A good benefits package is something that might entice someone to come work for your company, instead of your competitor's.
And that competitive advantage isn't going to disappear with healthcare reform.
"Dumping" employees anywhere will not likely pay off for employers in the long run, if they can't get employees."
Defined benefit pension plans also give employers a competitive advantage, but they have gone the way of the dinosaur because of 401ks. The same thing will happen to company sponsored health insurance if the government option is implemented. I don't think unemployment is going to be low enough in the next few years for any employer to have problems finding employees anyway.
Pensions as a whole haven't disappeared. "Defined benefit" plans are practically gone, because companies don't want the uncertainty -- they want to know how much they have to put into a pension fund. Which is why the COMBINATION of 401Ks and defined contribution pension plans is now the norm.
ReplyDeleteIf the public option is so poor -- and if it's soooooo intent in killing people -- are you seriously suggesting that a company with a good benefits package -- and a policy that doesn't look to kill people -- won't retain that private plan for a competitive advantage over a company that dumps its loyal employees into the Government Death Mill?
You can try to talk out of both sides of your mouth, but sooner or later, your words will collide.
So the argument here is that the public option is bad because it will work too well?
ReplyDelete