Posted on 11/12/2004 2:16:04 PM PST by Between the Lines
It looks as though my wife's insurance will be a much better deal. Do you think my company will let me keep the portion of my health insurance "benefit" when I drop it? No way. It's exactly what they want. They don't want to provide insurance at all. More profit in it that way.
No offense intended. Just tickled me at the thought of asking the company for my portion of the benefit.
I think that's great. I know my company's HR clown would laugh in my face if I asked for that money.
My boss is already said he is putting his resume out after the first of the year.
Granted, it's not much dough, but as I understand it, it really is meant as a (small) incentive to not buy into the company plan.
Except the vineyard owner didn't take money away from those who worked all day to pay those who did not.
Presumably things won't go that far. If they do, the dimwits who let it will indeed see their highly paid employees start hiking out the door. Right now, however, I pay so little for my medical insurance that I wouldn't even notice if they tripled or quadrupled my cost. I would, however, notice if my highly competent administrative assistant and back office support staff hiked out the door, and were replaced by the barely literate drones who populate the back offices and secretarial pools of a lot of big financial institutions. The extra couple of hours a day I'd have to spend cleaning up after them would be a lot more painful than subsidizing the health insurance of the current crew.
That's the purpose of the parable, isn't it -- to teach something by stating it in the context of a story that people can relate to?
Many talking about leaving my husband's shop too...
They've doubled health insurance costs last year, and haven't given them a raise in 2 years - blaming the economy...
My husband brought home a copy of his resume last night for me to update...
I think I'll switch my banking to a non-communist bank.
No, but the high-paid employees who accept the terms of their compensation are in no position to complain about someone else's terms of compensation, right?
If I pay $300 a month for my insurance and I'm quite content with that, what difference does it make if someone else is only paying $200?
The health insurance I buy for my company is weighted not just by family coverage but by the number in the family...
A family of three I'm paying approx. $650/month for and a family of 5 almost $850/month.
BTW, a single employee is about $310/month.
This is a huge cost for my company, a small business but I want this coverage in place for them. Our rentention rate is very high.
NeverGore :^)
I don't bank with Wachovia to begin with, but I would never bank with them for another simple reason . . . they charge higher ATM fees to non-customers than any other bank in the area I live.
Oh, wait a minute.... they're "asking"? Or was the AP author of this article merely a scumbag Democrat who is fully schooled in the scumbag-ese language?
Why don't they pay the lower end employees more and the higher end less and keep the insurance the same.
I guess this way the higher end people can feel better about themselves, and accept the reduction in pay.
My company got smart on that. They have one tier for single, one for employee plus 1 and one for family.
It made it more equitable for a couple with no kids to not have to pay the family rate. I have 4 kids and agree with that policy. They also have a cost tier that goes up once at a certain income level. Last year I cracked that level by $100.00. Not real thrilled but that's life.
Now if we could get an insurance company that doesn't really suck everything would be real cool. FWIW CIGNA is the most incompetent bunch of dorks in the business.
Your company may have had nothing to do with that. In some states, insurance companies are very strictly regulated in terms of what types of coverage they can offer. A couple of years ago my company started offering an "employee + one" tier . . . because the state insurance regulators mandated it.
Where does he work. It sounds like me place. We had pretty good health care this year. Now it went from paying 3300/yr to $3500/yr with a $4000 deductible.
FWIW, we do something very similar in the military.
I believe your numbers would be shocking to some people (don't know why). They just don't get how much things cost in health care. It's getting to be a real problem. Small companies have a much bigger problem.
They raised prices at my husband's shop over a year ago.
We have Kaiser and pay about $4500/year (not including what his employer also gives per month). We were paying around $2300 prior to June 2003. Also our co-pays went up: $100 copay for ER now, $75.00 for immediate care (ER treatment that doesn't necesitate a hospital visit and you visit one of their clinics instead), $50.00 per office visit. The insurance also doesn't cover chiropractic (they'd rather stick me on pain pills for the rest of my life - no thank you!) and it's cheaper for me to go to the eye doctor at Wal-mart for my prescription, glasses and contacts than to go to my own doctor.
This doesn't include Dental insurance which is another premium altogether...
And they still keep talking about giving the raises these men desperately need and deserve... and keep talking... and talking... and lying.... and talking...
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