Health Insurance increasing by over 20% AGAIN this year.

[sixone]

You don't know what your raises would have been without your Cadillac coverage. If you had substantial pay increases, then the increases in $ to your health benefits packages would have been only a slight percentage of your increase in total compensation. That just means that you had substantial enough increases in salary to swamp the increases in premiums paid to your insurer on your behalf. That is, unless your employer significantly cut the quality of your health benefits.

Congrats! What field are you in?

But you don't know what his raises would have been, either. So your statement that his raises would have been higher has no basis in fact.

 

[preslove]

But you don't know what his raises would have been, either. So your statement that his raises would have been higher has no basis in fact.

Except for the fact that insurance premiums have risen across the board. Which is a fact.

 

[sactoking]

My company informed us that they will drop the insurance completely, they spend over 100,000 dollars on insurance for us, but will only cost them $10k penalty if they drop it, forcing us to Obamacare..so i guess they saved a ton of money.

That sounds about right. For a penalty of $10,000 with offering no coverage your company would have about 35 employees. With annual premiums of $100,000 and 35 employees you'd be looking at ~$2,900 per employee.

The people who are really going to get screwed are the young, well-paid (relatively) professionals. 400% FPL for a single person will be about $48,000; make $48,001 and you get no advance premium tax credit. Then add in the fact that you're young and premiums will be going up 100% and you could see recent college graduates paying 10% or more of their income. Luckily the young will be able to qualify for catastrophic plans, but the coverage won't be great.

 

[sixone]

Except for the fact that insurance premiums have risen across the board. Which is a fact.

That doesn't make the other crap you said about his raises even remotely true.

 

[Jeff7]

Stuff like this is what helps keep me working where I am.

The base pay isn't all that great, I'll say that. But there are various nice little perks here and there, and it's not a terribly stressful job, at least for me.

Only within the last year or two did our insurance plan even start to carry a deductible - and with it started a deduction from the weekly paycheck. (Deductible was $500 last year, $1k this year.) My paycheck deduction is just a little over $2. And there's a deductible reimbursement plan available through the company, at no expense, other than filling out a form that is little more than to sign your name to a statement that says "Yes, I want to participate in this reimbursement plan."
I don't know what the actual plan cost increases have been though.

 

[purbeast0]

You don't know what your raises would have been without your Cadillac coverage. If you had substantial pay increases, then the increases in $ to your health benefits packages would have been only a slight percentage of your increase in total compensation. That just means that you had substantial enough increases in salary to swamp the increases in premiums paid to your insurer on your behalf. That is, unless your employer significantly cut the quality of your health benefits.

In other words, if your salary increased 25% in a year, then that would swamp even a 10% increase in your health premiums.

Congrats! What field are you in?

or even if i was paying for my own health insurance, my raise still could have been 25%, and the company could have banked the extra money. like you said, i don't know what they would have been, neither do you.

your made up situations are just that ... made up.

my situations are a reality.

i'm a software engineer.

 

[Ninjahedge]

And if those people don't have coverage, they go to the doctor, don't pay the bill and then the hospitals/doctors, who have to make money, raise the bills on those that do pay to make up for it. You are in a no win situation unless you force EVERYONE to pay for it...and that's not going to happen (and no, Obamacare isn't the same ...i.e. universal healthcare).

What happens when someone goes to the doctor, and the doctor only gets $45 from US Healthcare as part of their contract for a checkup?

SO the 25 minutes of doctor time and 45 minutes of various reception, scheduling and clerical (as well as facilities) is only worth $10 copay and $45 from the insurance company?

The irony being that those WITHOUT insurance are forced to pay the balance.


Now what should be written into the health care laws is a maximum profit percentage on all health care services going through insurance. 5%? 8%?

When my insurance company upped my companies rates because they went above the 75¢/$1 pay in to payout range (yes, 33% in administrative fees), they upped the rates.

Pointing fingers at Universal HC is not 100% fair in this. We need to start looking at where this money is ACTUALLY going before we start picking out scapegoats. Some things have to be kept in mind. Things like being able to go to the doctors regularly may help prevent illnesses from progressing to the point where Medicare/Medicaid had to take the guy with the infection into the Emergency room instead of just an out-patient family doctor.

Our system is broken. UHC, or what we passed and CALL UHC, is only a stopgap and needs a lot of improvement. I have heard NO SOLUTIONS so far. (BTW, health insurance went up for me a goof 50% well before UHC was enacted, so blaming the latest on it is BS. Maybe instead of limiting "profit margins" on private healthcare, we should limit gross income vs expenditure for these companies and see how that goes. Will never happen. A lot of that money being "earned" goes towards getting people on both sides of the aisle elected, so kiss that goodbye).

Offer some real solutions rather than political dander and maybe we can get the pundits to stop playing the sheeple into bleating at each other and get a plan that actually works to keep a strong and healthy workforce at MINIMUM EXPENSE TO ALL.