Posted on 05/01/2014 12:36:30 PM PDT by Old Yeller
Get ready for a trip back to the 1950s. Back then, fast-growing companies began to offer health insurance as a fringe benefit to help recruit workers. It helped that the government had passed a few tax breaks making it affordable for corporations. So it was basically by accident that employer-provided health insurance became the norm in the United States, even though the government came to oversee healthcare in most other developed nations.
We may soon go back to a model in which employers provide healthcare more as a perk than as a routine benefit, requiring workers to get insurance from other sources. That could save big companies up to $700 billion by 2025, according to a new report from S&P Capital IQ. It’s hard to think of any other single change that could save companies that much money, indicating how powerful the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could become once it has fully impacted the U.S. healthcare system. S&P predicts that companies will do the math and find it irresistible to move more and more of their workers off company-run plans and into the exchanges established under Obamacare, as the ACA is known. Companies with more than 50 workers will have to pay a penalty if they don’t offer insurance, but it could still be cheaper when factoring in the savings on healthcare; that’s because insurance costs have skyrocketed during the last 20 years, making healthcare one of the costs companies find most difficult to control.
The rising and unpredictable nature of healthcare costs led AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to make his unfortunate comment about "distressed babies" earlier this year. Armstrong took a lot of heat and later apologized, but many CEOs expresss similar frustrations (usually privately).
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Thank you Captain Obvious!
It really wouldn’t be too bad to get the individual back in charge of their own health insurance instead of getting it through their employer,
BUT NOT IN THIS WAY!
Tax deductible premiums, tax advantaged FSA’s, etc.
That’s the way to go.
I worked for a major company in the late 1970’s. They did not pay for your insurance but had a plan that you could sign up for and pay yourself through payroll deduction. Cost $50 a month for me and two children - $250 deductible and then 20% co-pay. Kids in all kinds of competitive sports and we were on a first name basis with the local orthopedic and dentist. The employer administered the plan and paid their own claims. Just great coverage.
Considering that it was a privately held firm, although it was world wide, and that the owners were very thrifty, doubt if they subsidized it and wouldn’t have offered it if they weren’t at least breaking even.
That would help a lot.
Look at all the empty store fronts. Once employing thousands of people. No job thanks to the democrats.
Fast forward three or four decades, and expectations shifted such that companies were expected to provide health insurance for employees. Now it has become the government's obligation via taxpayers to provide health care for every single American!
Government is solely a force. It is a force, as George Washington said, that is a "dangerous servant" with potential of becoming a "fearful master."
I will only vote for candidates who advocate for REDUCING GOVERNMENT as the first-line tactic of addressing ANY of America's ills, from moral to economic.
“... companies began to offer health insurance as a fringe benefit to help recruit workers... ... it was basically by accident that employer-provided health insurance became the norm ...”
No, it was government control that started it. During WWII the federal government froze wages, and since business could not attract good employees by offering higher wages, they developed a work-around and began to offer non-wage benefits like health care, paid vacations, retirement plans, etc.
Government stated the whole thing by poking their nose into the free market in the first place.
:^) See my post 27!
Bingo. Corporate America wants OUT from under that yoke. The trick was to do it while maintaining insurance company profits. Voila - Obamacare.
I think you’ve got it right. Businesses would love to unload the cost of healthcare from their books. Obamacare gives them a legimate reason to do so. None of this improves the quality of healthcare...but improvementis not the desired outcome....control is the desired outcome
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