Posted on 05/28/2010 7:05:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Towers Watson, a leading human resources consulting firm, has conducted a survey of 661 human resource and benefit specialists across America. While benefit professionals are still digesting the new law, the survey shows that they are even more skeptical of Obamacare than the public is.
These benefit specialists represent a broad range of industries, and are responsible for choosing health-insurance plans for almost 4 million Americans. If their fears come true, the future of American health care is bleak. Among the highlights:
● 90 percent believe that Obamacare “will increase their organization’s health care benefit costs”;
● 88 percent intend to pass the increases onto employees by increasing employee premium contributions or other cost-sharing measures;
● 74 percent intend to “reduce health benefits and programs” by using stingier health plans, restricting eligibility for health coverage, and using spousal waivers or surcharges.
By a wide margin, employers’ three top priorities for health-care policy are containing health-care costs (96 percent saying it is a high priority); encouraging healthier lifestyles (88 percent); and improving the quality of care (75 percent). Only 25 percent of those surveyed believe that the law will actually encourage healthier lifestyles, and only 20 percent believe it will improve the quality of care.
Another group that will be affected by Obamacare, according to the survey, are retirees, especially early retirees (i.e., those under the age of 65). Seventy-seven percent of employers believe that large companies will reduce or eliminate their retiree health benefits, now that the law prevents insurers from shunning those with preexisting conditions. “Just as many baby boomers are deciding whether to delay retirement, employers will be determining if it makes financial sense for them to remain in the retiree medical business,” said Dave Osterndorf, a senior consulting actuary at Towers Watson. The preexisting condition mandate “will likely accelerate employers exiting sponsorship of retiree health programs.” Naturally, the more that employers opt out of sponsoring their retirees’ health benefits, the more that the government will end up picking up the tab.
On the bright side, 58 percent of employers said that the rising cost of health insurance would lead them to replace their existing health benefits with consumer-driven health plans (assuming that Obamacare doesn’t outlaw them). Seventy-four percent said that they do not plan to discontinue health coverage for their active employees, though “it’s something you want to monitor over time,” said Mark Maselli, head of the Towers Watson group that conducted the study.
you hafta wonda why citizens companies on the obama plantation
allowed this to become law.
and
allowed this to become law.
From what I read it's big companies like Wal-mart and GE who were the big supporters. It's all about crushing their competition and making it harder for upstart smaller companies to threaten them.
Completely unexpected...
lol who else would they pass it too...the fools that voted for the fools that came up with this mess.
Of course - this was the plan. Another part of the plan is that smaller companies will drop health care coverage for their employees because it will be cheaper for them to pay the fines. Then, as the public clamors for more affordable coverage, Congress jumps in and passes a public option plan, leading inexorably to a single-payer system.
Like Boy Zero himself said... “This is what CHANGE looks like!”
...and “CHANGE” sucks!
Yet ANOTHER example of what happens when goobermint gets its poisonous hands where they don’t belong.
all according to plan...they want to get so many of us so upset and agitated at the current employment sponsored health coverage situation that we’ll go screaming down to D.C. and DEMAND single payer. (Alinsky 101)
...and the oil producers will pass on the new energy taxes to the consumers....and the financial companies will pass on the new fees and cost of oversight to their customers......anyone notice a trend here?
DING! DING! DING! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a WINNAH!
It has always been about getting to single payer. Only the desperately stupid could ever think otherwise; and, that includes the slimeballs in the Congress.
The anointed one continues to push us down the slippery slope to socialism.
It’s time to take back the country.
Obamacare will go down as the most unpopular law in the history of the United States and those who supported it will become pariahs for evermore and vilified through time immemorial. They will become as despised through history as has President Hoover for the Great Depression.
Buh, buh, but...I thought we were getting ‘money for nothing and our chicks for free.’ [Or Mr. Right for us ladies]
Obumbler et al- ‘YOU LIE!’
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