Why You Can’t Keep the Plan You Are In
The news isn’t good for proponents of health care reform. It’s the health insurance marketplace that’s delivering the message: Fewer and fewer people are getting to keep the coverage they already have. [A] Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 2010 health insurance rates, which showed the employee share rising 14 percent despite overall costs rising just 3 percent, is a harbinger of what’s to come. Faced with premiums that continue to rise faster than inflation, employers are opting to load more of that cost onto employees.
Full article on how health reform will shift costs to employees.
The economics of this is straightforward. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Employee benefits are a substitute for wages. So if the government requires more benefits, take home pay has to go down.
The White House keeps trying to convince everybody that health reform is one big free lunch. It isn’t. and that is why they are in trouble.
I have no doubt that health insurance is going to become more expensive. That’s a certainty.
What ever happened to the idea that people who like the plan they are in will be left alone? I suppose they were conned.
Well, Neil, talk to your HR department about that. With or without the health care bill, they change your plan every year.
Am I missing something? Doesn’t the employee shoulder the cost anyway? Whether or not they know it…?
It would have been nice to see a proposal that _didn’t_ pull the rug from under work-based plans.
I thought you wanted people to pay more of their own health care costs.
Steve