If any of you are doing your 2011 health care elections for your employer in the next few weeks, chances are that you will notice a lot of of things are different – costs are going up! Ultimately you will be having a smaller paycheck come January and you can thank Barack Hussein Obama and his loyal followers in the Democratic party.
by Michael Tanner
This month, McDonald’s warned that the health-care reform law passed in March could force it to drop health coverage for some 30,000 workers. A few days later, 3M announced that starting in 2013 it will no longer provide health-insurance coverage to its retirees.
That came on the heels of a decision by Harvard Pilgrim, Massachusetts’ second-largest insurer, to drop its Medicare Advantage health-insurance program at year’s end, forcing 22,000 senior citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine back into traditional Medicare. Then there’s the Principal Financial Group, which recently decided it was getting out of the health-insurance business. Roughly 840,000 people will likely lose their insurance as a result.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
During the debate over health-care reform, President Obama told us nearly every day that if you had health insurance now and were satisfied with it, you’d be able to keep it. It should be clear by now that that statement was, well, less than accurate.
In fact, it’s becoming harder to find anyone who can keep their current insurance.
As is well known by now, the health-care reform law con tains both an individual and an employer mandate. By 2014, employers with 50 or more workers must provide insurance or pay a fine. Individuals who don’t get insurance through work or a government program must buy it on their own or they, too, will be fined.
And not just any insurance will do: To qualify, a policy must meet a host of new regulatory requirements and offer a minimum, government-devised, set of benefits.
It now looks like the secretary of Health and Human Services will grant McDonald’s a waiver, so those 30,000 workers won’t lose out thanks to ObamaCare. If so, the company will join the teachers unions and other politically connected winners of exemptions.
But other businesses that offer limited-benefit plans known as “mini-meds” may not be so lucky. Those plans have cheaper premiums because they, among other things, restrict the number of covered doctor visits or impose a maximum on insurance payouts in a year. They are particularly popular with part-time, seasonal and low-wage workers in the restaurant and retail industries.
But ObamaCare’s new regulations will all but eliminate those plans, so more than a million of those vulnerable workers will likely lose their current insurance. Some could be forced into Medicaid, while others will have to buy much pricier policies than they have today.
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Read the rest here: Promises Broken
Tags: Michael Tanner
