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.
Well, I guess we know what’s in the Obamacare bill, now that you passed it, right Nancy? String her up.
What states?
-Barack Hussein Obama, 16 July 2009-
Correct. Tennessee’s TennCare offers a plan about like this for small businesses, tad more expensive, for slightly more coverage, but not all that much more. They didn’t have many takers.
When I first starting working we had company health ins. it covered in hospital care and ER (with a deductible for the ER visit), doctor if you were in the hospital. Otherwise you footed your own bills for RX and doctor visits. It meant you didn’t run to the doctor for a hang nail because you had to foot the entire bill. That would be better than these kind of plans.
My gov’t plan cost me 30 years of taxes plus the now monthly premiums, and is rationed care. And pretty soon there will be no doctor, hospital, etc that will be willing to take me as a patient....Medicare. I go to the doctor twice a year to get my 4 RX’s renewed or if a new health issue arises that I can’t take care of with OTC treatment.
Unfortunately I don't think incompetency is an impeachable offense, and treason is defined in the Constitution as "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
We don't want a vague definitions of treason being used to execute political enemies. We have a lot of relationships with other countries that are mixed at best. Sometimes we work together towards a goal and other times we work towards our own interests.
Treason would be extremely difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, especially because the President has a right to have his own views on what is best for out country.
We as a nation made the mistake of electing Obama. We also made the mistake of electing majorities in Congress that are helping push a lot of his agenda forward.
We have a representative form of government, and we as a nation have chosen our representatives poorly. That is what we need to change. Otherwise we could elect a small government conservative and Congress could turn on him and charge him with treason for trying to dismantle the over reaching government they have worked to build.
Few people seem to understand that it is the Constitution that defines our government, not the politicians in office. In many ways we the federal government has left the Constitution so far behind that you would have to change most politicians with treason for working against the Constitution if you charged one.
The company is Harvard Pilgrim. They cancelled their Medicare Advantage in New Hampshire and Maine.
The EMPLOYEES of McDonald’s should be the ones to call and complain. THEY are the ones who will be without coverage now.
The coverage mandates and regulations of 0bamacare strike again. These are the unintended or intended consequences of 0bamacare.
However, I would point out that a $2000 annual cap on benefits won’t get you very far in terms of health care. Most of the McDonald’s employees will probably end up on Medicaid or receive subsidies when we feel the full brunt of the legislation in 2014 if 0bamacare is not declared unconstitutional or repealed.
“...Treason would be extremely difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, especially because the President has a right to have his own views on what is best for out country....”
True, but what about a case where the POTUS is DELIBERATELY pushing policies that he knows will almost certainly collapse the economy, and thereby cause irrepairable harm to the country?
And when those policies are directly co-aligned with those of external enemies (say for instance, oh, international communist and socialist elements, and islamic lunatics), and he KNOWINGLY continues on his destructive path, what then?
To my mind, if THAT is not the definition of giving AID and comfort to our enemies, I don’t what is...
To that extent, the large majority of the DNC leadership should be charged and prosecuted for treason. Jimmy Carter included.
30,000 hourly employees fall to progressive control.
"The Wall Street Journal, citing a company memo, reported that McDonald's might cut the insurance unless U.S. regulators waived a requirement of new healthcare legislation championed by President Barack Obama....McDonald's told federal regulators in the memo that it would be “economically prohibitive” for its insurance carrier to continue to cover hourly workers unless it receives a waiver to the 80 percent minimum requirement, the Journal reported. Federal officials say there is no guarantee a waiver will be granted, it said."
at : (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp and federal health officials denied a newspaper report that the fast food chain may cut health insurance for its nearly 30,000 hourly workers.
Checkout all the coverage this story got: Google search: 'McDonald’s: health reform care regulations employees to lose insurance'.
Of course he didn't want to talk about it. That might have made congresscrooks nervous before the vote. Better keep it a secret until it's too late to stop it.
I'm sorry but your accusation is absurd. Obama and his political allies have no interest in collapsing the economy. Such elitists don't want to rule over a smoking ruin.
The understand that their policies will do economic harm, but feel that their goals are worth the costs because they feel their goals are admirable or at least beneficial to someone. They are trying to move the US towards their vision. They do understand that they can't do so in one fell swoop, so they work to do so incrementally. I just doubt they are competent enough to know how much damage they might cause in one of their incremental steps.
“Absurd”???
I wouldn’t call it absurd, especially when you look at all these people have done in the last 18 months.
And I certainly wouldn’t call it absurd when you consider all the Czars he’s put in place - all dedicated, hard-left socialist or outright communist A**holes.
You presume them to be merely “elitists”...I think there’s much more to them than that.
But you’re entitled to your opinion, and I respect it. We’ll agree to disagree.
What a racket!
Not really. What you're missing is that fast food employees have a much higher turnover rate. So your yearly premium there is wrong, these employees don't work all year long on average. They get the benefits as soon as their deductions start and can max out the program and quit in a matter of months.
So for that one year of premium figure you have there, it usually takes two employees or better to make that. That means 2-3 times the forms, ID cards, summary plan descriptions etc for that one year of full premium. Which is why the admin is 2-3 times higher than a traditional plan.
Secondly, claims tend to run hot as it is a strictly VOLUNTARY program. It means adverse selection as you just cannot mandate a minimum participation requirement for low wage employees. Meaning it skews the actuarial curves as enrolled employees are pretty much guaranteed to max out the benefits and you cannot spread any risk at all among healthy employees. Trust me, insurance carriers make very little profit on these plans. It ALL goes to claims and admin.
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