Posted on 02/17/2013 4:34:58 PM PST by sgtyork
I don’t know if you will see this in your volume of email, but you might.
I am deeply into studying the impact of Obamacare on employers, and I have been communicating with highly sophisticated ERISA lawyers who are advising employers, from Fortune 50 companies to small firms under 50 employees, on whether to keep or drop or modify their employer group health plans.
It has become very clear to everyone involved who is analytical and not ideological that the rational strategy, for both large and small firms, is to cease providing health care insurance to employees.
No company wants to admit that they are considering eliminating health insurance as an option, or be the first one to drop their health insurance plan, but once a competitor does so, the preference cascade will begin. The clear sentiment is “We will not be the first one to drop our health insurance plan, but we would be a close second.”
The coming preference cascade for employer group health plans is what the Democrats fear the most, because Obamacare was sold to the masses as “if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.”
The people who really know the law, and who have been following the avalanche of regulations, have already figured this out. It will take a while for this specialized knowledge to seep downward, because right now only $800+ an hour ERISA attorneys and the most sophisticated HR people understand how Obamacare really works.
What was it Lenin said about capitalists and hemp?
Well, this will be fun to watch anyway. Let’s see how many employers raise the salaries of their employees when they drop insurance.
After all, “it’s part of the salary”...LOL! I’m willing to bet that most said employees end up with no insurance, no pay increase, and paying hundreds of dollars a month for a private policy. This will be just stellar for the economy.
Even if some decent companies step up and offer a few hundred a month in additional pay, people will be SHOCKED to discover what small business owners already know...it will cost them the equivalent of another mortgage payment to insure their family without a group policy.
I wonder how costs and wages would have differed if they had bumped pay to make up for lack of spending on insurance. Initially, it would seem that both company and employee benefited from lowers costs/tax breaks, but the "tax breaks" part tells me that it would probably have been more efficient if they had stayed out of it.
-——Can you say trail lawyer payoff-——
Not a pay off but further infliction of tyranny. America has ceased being a nation of laws. America has bacome a nation of lawyers.
America is controlled by a tyranny of lawyers.
“We twist the law to make it be what ever we want. That’s our Job” Allie Mc Beal
No arguments here. Every time government gets involved, costs go up, corruption abounds, and efficiency goes down the drain.
We are in the midst of a period where the larger business interests are scared shitless of the federal government.
Small business can afford to maintain principles and take issue with the federal government on an individual basis.
The individuals who run the larger businesses -- counting their top corporate officials and boardmembers -- dare not get cross-wise with the feds. Their corporations and their careers can get wiped out by one edict or decree. On purpose...or totally by accident.
As a consequence, they are prone to value judgments that will accept guaranteed crumbs from the federal table rather than openly defy this particular regime -- and risk everything.
Our federal government has grown far too powerful. And it has fallen into the hands of latent totalitarians.
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