Quote from Tsing Tao:
I know this is anecdotal, but I felt like mentioning it anyway.
When I was up in NC, I met with the guy developing the mountain. He has a rather large construction company, and employs 200 people. We got to talking about the election, and he said, unapologetically, that if Obama wins and he's forced to absorb additional health care costs, he will do so. But he will also fire 18 people, and reduce another 25 of them to under 30 hours a week to be able to pay for it.
I couldn't help but wonder if politicians thought about it that way (of course they didn't) when they put the plan in action. Additionally, I was curious how those 43 employees took it when he mentioned to the company what his intent was. Did they vote Obama?
I'm interested in the liberal argument to support Obamacare when we see this is what happens. RCG? La-bong? Any of you out there care to weigh in on this?
Tsingy, I haven't read the law, but believe it or not, I intend to.
From what I understand, employers with 50-199 employees will be required to offer "reasonable" healthcare coverage for their employees starting 2014, or pay $2,000 per employee as a fine.$2,000 is a lot cheaper than most health insurance yearly premiums but it is lost more expensive if you don't offer healthcare at all. Over 200, employees, I am not sure what the bill says but I know waivers are being granted by the feds to large companies. So your construction acquaintance might both be better off not trimming his payroll, or not trimming it until 2014. Again, there has been more propaganda and confusion over this bill than anything I have ever seen so i want to read it before announcing support or opposition to it. Just an observation, but it would seem prudent to maintain good employee health and offer coverage for employees in a trade such as construction. It sounds like the construction company owner offers minimal or no coverage to certain workers if the additional cost of keeping them on at $2,000 a head renders them a liability. Clearly, the law limits (or forces) choices by certain employers.
The question is how the country as a whole, both private and public, can reduce health care costs, improve healthcare with a minimum of interference in the private market. If Obamacare can't do that, junk it and start over.
The real elephant is Medicare and Medicaid. 700 billion and growing, far beyond thier funding. Private health care is paid for by the fruit of the labor by working people. But pretty soon Medicare and Medicare will be also and that's simply unsustainable. And perhaps immoral. Is it right to to severely tax a small productive part of the population to provide expensive
and often wasteful healthcare for people in their last few years, or for people chronically unproductive? The far right oddly lambasted Obamacare as "rationing" healthcare, but we already do that. Insurance companies act as a brake on hospitals and doctors, whose interest is too often to spend more.
In late 2007 my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had been a heavy smoker. She died in January 2009. I helped her with her medical appointments and her insurance and Medicare claims. In 2008 alone, Medicare paid out about $300,000 in claims on her behalf. Cat scans, biopsies, chemo, pain meds,oncologists, pulmonologists, hospital stays, etc. She ate about $7,500 out of pocket. However, she was just shy of 74 and had been eligible for Medicare I suppose since she was 65? Or is 68? It's safe to say Medicare paid at least 400k for her in her lifetime, as she had been treated for other matters prior to cancer. She probably paid into Medicare less than $50,000 and she had worked full time for 30 years at least.
That math won't keep working.
