Report: large employers could shift nearly all workers’ health coverage to marketplace by 2020

McClatchy News ^ | May 1, 2014 | BY TONY PUGH

[Oldeconomybuyer]

A new investor report predicts that Standard & Poor's 500 companies could shift 90 percent of their workforce from job-based health coverage to individual insurance sold on the nation's marketplaces by 2020.

If all U.S. companies with 50 or more employees followed suit, they could collectively save $3.25 trillion through 2025, according to the report by S&P Capital IQ, a division of McGraw Hill Financial.

Standard & Poor's 500 companies could save $689 billion over the same period if they did likewise, the report found. Savings for S&P 500 companies could top $800 billion if health care inflation remains at the traditional 7.5 percent rate over the next decade, the report estimates.

[Alberta's Child]

That sounds to me like America back in “the good old days.”

[khelus]

They don’t pay slave wages. I worked for a large corporation and was able to retire early and comfortably

You are talking of the past. Once big corporations DIDN'T pay slave wages. Today they pimp for intervention into the market for labor by supporting flooding the country will illegals and guest works from third world countries. Even those in once high paying STEM fields now compete with illegals.

Dropping subsidized health care coverage is a de facto decrease in compensation. Free or subsidized health insurance was once a form of untaxed compensation. No more.

[longtermmemmory]

THis is why the cronies WANTED obamacare. The goal is to dump healthcare from their compensation calculations.

(footnote: crony Bloomberg is in damage control mode today. His reputation is garbage.)

Socialized medicine of Obamacare is about keeping citizens as serfs/slaves/thralls.

[longtermmemmory]

Obama the president who brought back slavery.

[GOPJ]

I believe you’re thinking about companies that hire lots of low wage employees.

[Alberta's Child]

Free or subsidized health insurance was once a form of untaxed compensation. No more.

Well, yeah. If it wasn't "free" (whatever that means) and untaxed then employer-paid medical insurance never would have existed in the first place. There's never been a compelling reason for employers to be involved in the business of subsidizing medical insurance coverage for their employees. Conservatives should be thrilled with the idea of completely detaching a person's employment from his or her insurance situation. The days of the company town and the dopey paternalism of corporate America should have ended decades ago.

[1010RD]

It isn’t a true marketplace in the free market meaning of the word. It’s more like ‘marketplace’ that NPR radio program that twists the free market into a socialist pretzel.