Large employers will simply drop their health-care packages and let their employees find their own--which will be ObamaCare.
To add a delicious irony, the Waxman Show Trials were cancelled precisely because the subpoenaed documentation proves the Right was .....ahhhh.......right.
Quoting Fortune magazine:
Waxman didn’t simply request documents related to the write down issue. He wanted every document the companies created that discussed what the bill would do to their most uncontrollable expense: healthcare costs.
The request yielded 1,100 pages of documents from four major employers: AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere (DE, Fortune 500). No sooner did the Democrats on the Energy Committee read them than they abruptly cancelled the hearings. On April 14, the Committee’s majority staff issued a memo stating that the write downs were “proper and in accordance with SEC rules.” The committee also stated that the memos took a generally sunny view of the new legislation. The documents, said the Democrats’ memo, show that “the overall impact of health reform on large employers could be beneficial.”
Well, the Waxman spinners didn't exactly tell the truth.
Nowhere in the five-page report did the majority staff mention that not one, but all four companies, were weighing the costs and benefits of dropping their coverage.Let's quote the AT&T presentation:
"Even though the proposed assessments [on companies that do not provide health care] are material, they are modest when compared to the average cost of health care," and that to avoid costs and regulations, "employers may consider exiting the health care market and send employees to the Exchanges."
Umnnnhhh, yah.
AT&T revealed that it spends $2.4 billion a year on coverage for its almost 300,000 active employees, a number that would fall to $600 million if AT&T stopped providing health care coverage and paid the penalty option instead. AT&T declined comment.
Even innumerates recognize that $2.4Bn is > $600 Million.
Fortune sums it up:
What does it mean for health care reform if the employer-sponsored regime collapses? By Fortune's reckoning, each person who's dropped would cost the government an average of around $2,100 after deducting the extra taxes collected on their additional pay. So if 50% of people covered by company plans get dumped, federal health care costs will rise by $160 billion a year in 2016, in addition to the $93 billion in subsidies already forecast by the CBO.
There are conditionals in the article, and (as you noted) there are the usual disclaimers from Company execs.
Repeal it.
3 comments:
The Leftists want this to happen so that more people are forced to take the gov't plan.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Larry, did you know that lawful American citizens are guaranteed a vote to elect the people who choose and implement public policy? In effect, this makes YOU (but not only you--me, too)THE GOVERNMENT.
Did you also know that you are NOT guaranteed a vote on corporate policies? In fact, even if you happened to own voting shares, the odds are hopelessly stacked against you. Edward N. Wolff has shown that as of 2004 over NINETY PERCENT (90%) of corporate shares were owned by the wealthiest 20% of Americans. I'm taking a guess here, but statistically it seems likely, that you and me both are among the OTHER 80% of Americans, the ones who together own less than 10%.
So are you saying that you want to surrender your Constituional rights to the unelected power of a small cabal of plutocrats?
What's your point, Dom? That we have some kind of Right to someone elses wealth? That's called "theft". You act as if the rich have some type of ill-gotten gain. some may, but who are you to judge? The rich people I've met worked pretty damn hard for what they have. If I wanted to work that hard, I'd be rich, too.
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