Posted on 06/15/2010 9:29:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Obama administration had a message Monday for employers who want to keep federal bureaucrats from rewriting the rules for their company medical plans: Don't jack up costs for workers, and you won't have to worry about interference from the new health care law.
"What we don't want is a massive shift of costs to employees," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
She announced a new regulation that spells out how health plans that predate the health overhaul law can avoid its full impact. Meant to deliver on President Barack Obama's promise that people who like their current health coverage can keep it, the rule sets limits likely to become increasingly important as medical costs keep rising.
Plan changes that would cause a health plan to lose its "grandfathered" status and trigger new federal requirements include:
_ Dropping coverage for a particular health problem, for example, diabetes.
_ Increasing the proportion of insurance paid by workers, for example from 20 percent of the hospital bill to 25 percent.
_ Cutting back the share of premiums that the company pays by more than 5 percent.
_ Significantly increasing annual deductibles or co-payments paid by workers. For example, if an employer raises a $1,000 deductible by $500 over the next two years.
Workplace coverage is the mainstay of the nation's health insurance system, and will remain so under the new law. Consumer advocates said the regulation gives employers the flexibility to make needed changes, while protecting workers.
"If a plan changes in some significant way, or if it increases cost-sharing amounts, then that results in a very different plan — and it should not be grandfathered in," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group that supports the overhaul law.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Scumbags?
“This administration is economically illiterate.”
No he knows exactly what he’s doing.
No sweat. Just lay off enough people to keep the cost in line. The company doesn’t touch the policy and the Nazis are held at bay for awhile longer.
And do not expect the repubs to save you. They will be quite happy to have you under their control and blame the dems for it.
At my company we already got the bad news last week, we are having an open enrollment in the middle of the year because rates are going up so much. I am sure there is panic in the Home Office now because they got caught doing exactly this.
Too late. And it wasn’t my company that increased the cost, it was the insurance company. Jacked my rates 44% on an insurance policy that hasn’t had a claim on it in two years!
I think you called it right, here.
Health care is the main reason I am not a contractor anymore. I could not afford the individual policy rates, give me group rates and 1099 here we come. So take away the insurance then why do I need to be your employee anymore? Job Security? Raises? Vacation time?
37% here. I thought obamacare was supposed to cut costs. It's having the exact opposite 9and completely intentional) effect.
Looks like Obama is making sure that companies drop their healthcare plans.
I wonder how many plans will be terminated because of these threats?
Oh sure it is, our insurance broker flat out told us that the insurance companies were jacking their rates to ensure they got their revenue in before 2014 when everything got moved to a set rate.
Heck, my boss and I (we're a small company) have already talked about letting insurance lapse and taking the hit in the fines. It'd be cheaper for us to do and then we'd no longer have to be involved in what our employees are making.
Did you know that you will also be required by law to ask what your employees spouses are making? If you are offering insurance that is. It's so that if your employee is eligible for "help" from the government to afford premiums, but the only way to know if you're eligible is to also know what the household makes as a whole, not you as an individual.
Talk about intrusive!
The HHS can not possibly enforce compliance in any manner other than in a arbitrary and capricious manner, leading the enforcement agency into state and Federal courts lawsuit ensnarements that will further encourage employers to erode the corporate employee health care benefits as fast and furiously as possible as industry employment submarkets allow to remain competitive.
Of this I know a little about, I was an accountant for a health benefits administrator that managed over 3000 small to midsize employers’ health and life benefits plans.
No matter what the HHS and IRS enforcement strategy, outside of Federal and state government contractors, private industry will reincorporate at a quicker rate than anything the several thousand severely underpaid, overworked, and mostly incompetent boobs at the Fedgov level will be able to search through the IRS tax data, and insruance companies’ participation and explanation of benefits paperwork for employers/customers.
The entire health benefits system in this country is completely and utterly fucked, the paychecks for over 5% of the American employed workforce (in healthcare) is directly at stake, and the quality of life of 95%+ of Americans has been severely curtailed.
My brother’s deductible went up to $2500, basically he has no health care...
Neither do my husband and I since he’s been unemployed since September.
Hopey/Changey, yeah, we feel it alright.
Only to a small degree. Barry and the dems are stuck on stupid. I know their aim is to crap on the US but they aren’t smart. I think you’ll fallen for the big lie the media continually repeats. Certainly the effect of what they’re doing is detrimental but as far as a big well executed plan I just don’t think it could be pulled off by this band of boobs.
The gospel reading at Mass today was about our requirement to love even our enemies (Jesus talking about how just loving our friends makes us no different from the pagans).
Things like this make it VERY hard...
Step daughter’s health ins. just went up 17%.
This will do nothing but kill jobs and/or kill healthcare.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
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