Posted on 09/30/2010 6:31:00 AM PDT by markomalley
Back during the debate over the recently passed health care bill, President Obama repeatedly stated that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” This is proving to be increasingly as untrue as skeptics said it was.
McDonald’s has become the latest company to state that increased regulations built into the bill are going to make it untenable for the company to continue offering partial health insurance plans to some 30,000 hourly employees:
While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.
Last week, a senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.
McDonald’s and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.
Democrats who drafted the health law wanted the requirement to prevent insurers from spending too much on executive salaries, marketing and other costs that they said don’t directly help patients. [...]
Insurers say dozens of other employers could find themselves in the same situation as McDonald’s. Aetna Inc., one of the largest sellers of mini-med plans, provides the plans to Home Depot Inc., Disney Worldwide Services, CVS Caremark Corp., Staples Inc. and Blockbuster Inc., among others, according to an Aetna client list obtained by the Journal. Aetna also covers AmeriCorps teaching-program sponsors, who are required by law to make health coverage available.
Those pesky unintended consequences just keep cropping up. One hopes McDonald’s won’t be hearing from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for promoting “misinformation.”
Speaking of unintended consequences, it’s really quite unfortunate that health care seems to be yet another area (environmental extremism and Walmart/Target hatred are others) where the actual day-to-day interests of lower-income people have once again been sabotaged by those purporting to think in their best interests.
For those interested, Avik Roy at Forbes has a good writeup with more details on why the 80-85% expenditure requirement is going to mean higher private insurance rates for many:
Imagine if you ran a business, and one day the government told you that you would be fined if you: (1) minimized unnecessary expenses; (2) hired workers to specialize in customer service; (3) invested resources in order to ensure you wouldn’t get victimized by fraud. What would you do? Think quickly: because three months from now, this very system will be the law of the land for our nation’s health insurers.
Last Friday, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners—the association of the 50 state insurance commissioners—issued its draft guidelines for how insurers will need to calculate “medical-loss ratios,” or MLRs. The wonkiest among you will recall that the medical loss ratio is loosely defined as the dollar amount that an insurer spends on the health care of its beneficiaries, divided by the total dollar amount the insurer collects in premiums. Section 2718 of our new health care law mandates that insurance plans sold to individuals and small employers must spend at least 80 percent of their premiums on health care, and plans sold to large employers must spend at least 85 percent. [...]
And this isn’t just my opinion. Maine Superintendent of Insurance Mila Kofman wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, asking Sebelius to waive the MLR rules for Maine until 2014. “One insurer has indicated its intent to pull out of individual markets (and has explicitly named one state where that decision has already been made),” wrote Kofman. “Prior to 2014, implementation of an 80% medical loss ratio requirement may destabilize the individual health insurance market in Maine.” Maine currently has a state MLR requirement of 65 percent; eliminating 15 percent of an insurer’s budget in three months is no small task.
Thanks again Obama, you ****.
Impossible. Obama said that if we liked our current insurance plan, we could keep it. And Obama and Pelosi would never lie!
/s
DFrio... drip... drip... pretty soon you have a river.
LLS
Obama needs to be impeached, tried for treason and brought to justice.
Got McPresidency?
McDonalds should just tell the Department of Health and Human Services to pound sand.... If enough people did stuff like this the problems would work themselves out
Call your Congressman and Senators and express your thoughts on this outrage perpetrated against the American people on purpose. Inform them that We The People are coming on November 2nd and again in 2012. Bye bye Ruling Class.
Medicare Advantage cancelled in new england.
Over 20,000 people lost their health care.
But isn’t this Obama’s goal? If every big company dropped their health insurance, then wouldn’t we have the “public option” without even having Congress vote on it?
This is exactly what the socialists intend. More and more private companies drop their insurance plans and then more and more people start screaming for a fully government run system.
Crappy ins to begin with. Wouldn’t even cover the cost of going to the ER. It was about $13G when I had to go this year for a kidney infection on the weekend.
Monthly premiums to rise for 7 of top 10 Medicare prescription plans in 2011
http://www.startribune.com/business/103642009.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1OiP:DiiUiacyKUnciatkEP7DhUr
I wonder how that McDonalds employeee who was all like “Oh Thank you GOD for taking time out of your day to talk to me” feels about this.
when am I going to save my $7000?
I’m sure you’ll be better off on a gov’t plan, then...
Seriously! It’s $14 or $32 a week! What can you expect?
If you want more, you have to pay more.
More to come....
He probably thinks
“Obama has my best interests in mind, I trust him as my savior, and he will make this work out for me.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.