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.
They should never have been providing it in the first place, any more than they should have been providing automobile insurance.
That they do provide health insurance is a legacy of FDRs wage and price freezes.
Two goals are accomplished with obama care, the first is to push demand towards “single payer” ie government health care by ruining the system.The second is to have such a maze of regulations that you have to retain a lawyer in order to navigate system. Can you say trail lawyer payoff?
A question for all; has anyone bought that book being advertised on TV “Surviving 0bama Care?” If so is it any good?
So sell some of these short? When will the avalanche occur?
And the corollary to businesses dropping 0-care, is that many if not most healthy individuals will opt for the tax/penalty instead of purchasing the insurance. Because of ‘guaranteed issue’, an individual would be wise to wait until after they suffer a serious injury or develop a major medical condition. In the meantime, for minor illnesses, the rational choice will be to pay out of pocket. Just think of this, if you are a 20 or 30 something and you get really sick, and couldn’t work, in all likelihood, you would qualify for Medicaid because at that age, you have few assets.
As individuals eschew the exchanges, only the sickest will bother to enroll, pushing the price up and destabilizing the insurance market. Insurers will call for ever higher tax/ penalties to force more individuals to spread the risk on the exchanges. But, can you imagine the spectacle of insurers calling for higher tax/ penalties? There’s not a chance for that politically.
It seems likely that the tax/penalty cost, as indicated in the 0-care law, will be outstripped by the rise in insurance prices. In my view, this could result in an opportunity for private insurers to offer low cost insurance (non-0-care qualified) to low risk consumers. Even with the cost of the mandate/tax, such a plan may make sense. We will have to see where prices end up, as this will be the determining factor. Total implosion of the insurance industry is also a possibility. As for single payor, with total nationalization, I have my doubts. We are so broke, that any suggestion of a single payor would likely tank the dollar, and then everything implodes.
This letter writer has it figured it out just about right, as well... I think I just read a thread title that said Obama has initiated things that he will have little control of and I think I'll go read it now.
All this is so disheartening after a 50 year successful career in helping both individuals and employers resolve health expense issues with carefully crafted financial insurance to control the risks for all involved in a free society!!!
I used to believe, like Winston Churchill, that Americans usually end up making the right decisions... after they've tried all the alternatives!
Now I just sit in awe at the depths of stupidity!!!
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.Umm, false.
People on Free Republic were warning about this during the entire Obamacare debate. The information was available to anyone who was paying attention.
Thanks for the answer on the book! Its very existence is a condemnation of 0bamaCare.
Which is why I cannot understand why the insurance industry supported this travesty.
I think it's because they saw a windfall position for themselves not so much as insurance providers but as middlemen between the health care industry and the government.
I don't know how they keep their spot on the gravy train once the feds take over everything, unless it is as a kind of consultant/facilitator/kickback industry...which of course is how the rest of Washington runs.
Free cell phones = free health care
Consider the role of insurance companies in Medicare: Offering supplemental insurance to cover the 20% that Medicare doesn't cover.
There is a lot of competition in the market, so itis pressumably profitable, even though coverage cannot be denied.
For fun...google “betrayed by obamacare” what you will see will amaze you....
Look at all the groups that made headlines as being betrayed by obamacare.
You are definitely right that the industry has shown that it can turn a profit on the margins of federal health care.
But that doesn’t explain why the industry would have climbed aboard Obamacare. And to me it seems like very small potatoes compared to the billions of dollars in regular coverage the companies offer now, and that all might be wiped out by taxpayer-funded “insurance”.
What the medicare supplement example makes me wonder is whether a free-market option for insurance will continue to exist, in which people who take care of themselves, who are willing to pay market prices, who are eager to go to self-designated physicians who only want to accept free-market payments...that is what I would like to see.
The whole point of Obamacare is to destroy the private health insurance system and force everyone into federal single-payer of some sort. It’s all about power for the federal government and thereby the Democrats as the party of government.
Think about it.
It's a great short-term financial boost for the insurance industry because of the government mandate. If the U.S. government were to pass a law requiring every adult in the U.S. to buy a new car every year, you can be damn sure that the auto industry would be 100% behind it.
In the long term, the insurance industry benefits from the end of employer-sponsored health insurance because the industry will basically be going out of business as the demographic shift in the U.S. population makes it more difficult for them to stay in business anyway. As others have pointed out here on FreeRepublic many times over the years, medical insurance as we know it in the U.S. is a house of cards waiting to collapse.
The purpose of Obama’care’ is to Nationalize the Medical and Medical Insurance Industries so that the income from these Industries can help pay for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, No Child Left behind, Food Stamps, unemployent payments, Aid to Dependent Children, Free Cell phones to the non-working poor, etc., etc., etc.
Oh yeah, and Midnight Basketball for Inner City Children. Well, not all cities as Mayor Emanuel of Chicago is allowing turf wars in some of the communities that Obama organized, years and years ago.
Duh, did Obama BUILD those communities? No wonder he was given the Nobel Peace Prize!
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