So the House once again voted to delay the implementation of the Affordable Care Act for a year (presumably on the theory that a unicorn will arise and kill it before it comes up for activation then) and strip Congress and its staff from receiving any subsidies they might be eligible for to help pay for their participation in the health care program.
Republicans fumed that the portion of the law grants “special treatment” to Congress. It has become a rallying cry among conservatives, but the reality is less simple. Members and staff are required to drop their existing government plans and buy insurance on the Obamacare exchanges, and the health care law provides them subsidies up to a point — as it provides others who buy from the marketplaces. The GOP amendment would essentially strip them of their employer contribution.
Jeebus, cut off your noses to spite your face, why doncha?
They are zealots who’ve forgotten common sense. There is no other term for them. The President is not going to sign into law a measure which delays or destroys his signature domestic achievement. A Democratically-held Senate is not going to pass a measure which does that. They know this, but they don’t care. They’ve tilted into insanity.
The whole story of course, that those who created this silly idea of Obamacare Exemption, do not care to acknowledge that it’s PART OF WAGES to be given health care insurance with employment.
It for some reason serves their purpose to capitalize on the fact that we’ve gone generations now with the employer-sponsored health insurance, that people have literally stopped understanding that job benefits on top of wages are just another form of pay compensation for work, and literally no longer have a clue about the real value of their job’s pay, especially in relation to what other people are getting paid with no health insurance.
But many people just don’t think, don’t do the math.
So then insane ideas make sense, because the logic is all gone.
Instead of realizing – hullo – these people don’t want a pay cut. Well who would??
And if it’s a matter of this whole “medicaid plus” idea. That the exchange insurances won’t be as nice…
Well then why exempt ANYONE?
Well, then the answer seems clear… BAN OUTRIGHT employer sponsored health insurance.
Problem solved.
The history of this particular bit of idiocy is simple: Grassley wanted to put a poison pill into the legislation but the Dems said “Ok, fine,” and accepted it. But the net effect was that the language didn’t get changed in drafting the final bill, so “the amendment left out language that would have explicitly given lawmakers the same before-tax employer contribution as any other federal employee gets.”
Banning all employer-provided health care would hurt gazillions of people. You don’t really think all those employers, newly freed from health care bills, would turn around and raise the wages of all their employees, do you?
Your idea that employer provided health care ban would lower everyone’s wages suffers from the same flaw as all the arguments against minimum wage.
You have fallen into the thing in the wood shed fear.
The fact is that employers have already been freeing themselves from health care bills for decades now.
They’ve also been lowering wages across the board for most ordinary people.
If everyone was forced to buy health care on the open market, we would be in essence, in a single payer plan. And there would be no group rates, but it would bring down costs for everyone. Not just allow the honored elite who command wages that include health insurance by working at the elite big corporations who get cut rate deals.
Do you really think that 40% of workers with health plans now, would not demand a higher wage, once they were no longer getting a certain fringe benefit of health insurance?
Companies would be forced to raise their wages or lose out to the competition that did, as workers of merit jumped ship for better pay.
(Frankly, I think you’re going to see a lot of this anyway, once people find out they can work at their dream jobs & get insurance subsidies through the exchange, at no net loss of benefits/wages.)
There is nothing forcing companies to provide workers with health care insurance.
I know this because the ACA mandate was put off until 2015, and plenty of people work full time jobs that don’t offer benefits.
The only companies that offer health benefits, do so because it makes sense, and they have to, in order to get quality workers.
They do not feel compelled to do so out of some kind of moral responsibility.
Even small businesses that offer employees insurance usually do so, because the owners themselves need insurance & they can better afford a small group plan than not offering it as a form of wage to employees & buying it on the individual market for just themselves, and paying their employees more to attract workers.
Banning employer provided health insurance, would be, in essence, undoing the damage done by the Stabilization Act of 1942.
That began our path to our awful unfair system where a 50 year old man, who’s paid for insurance his whole working career but never needed the insurance & barely used any of the health care he paid for for years, can be left without insurance after COBRA running out and then be slapped with a $26,000 bill for an emergency appendectomy.
Employer provided insurance doesn’t work. If it did, paying into it via your benefits at an employer for years, would cover you later when you need it.
It doesn’t work that way. That 50 year old man was subsidizing his older co-workers health care while he worked. And when he got older and needed it? The system failed him.
One way or another health insurance IS a transfer from the young to the old, from the now healthy worried they may get sick, to the already sick person.
The only question is, how to make it really work?
Obamacare is the conservative privatization answer to trying to make the model work.
Sweden & Australia do it much more efficiently, but they don’t have the distaste for social programmes that Americans do.
The system is hurting workers with health insurance as benefits whether they know it or not.
To illustrate the point, take this example.
Mr. Smith works for a BIG company that gets a good deal on employer sponsored health insurance. Worth $4/hr in wages.
Mr. Jones works for a small company that does not get as good a deal on employer health insurance. Worth $7/hr in wages.
Mr. Martin works for a company that does not offer any health insurance, so he buys it for an even worse deal than any employer could.
All 3 have identical medical coverage plans – nice plans that cover 80%.
All 3 have identical hourly wage pay of $10/hr.
Who’s getting paid the most & least?
Do they even know?
These days, people don’t even know that Mr. Smith makes $14/hr & Mr. Jones makes $17/hr, and Mr. Martin just makes his actual $10/hr.
What’s more is that even with the small business exchange, small employers are STILL not going to get as good deals off insurance companies as huge companies.
If they do, it’s only because the taxpayers are footing the bill. In other words, they’re not getting better deals – they’re getting taxpayer money – which goes to the insurance companies.
So who wins here?
I can tell you this, it’s not the employees who have health insurance through work who are reaping the gains through this system.
It’s the insurance companies, and the big businesses who get labor much cheaper than they should in a fair market.