<------ most likely not a "high value animal" under Becca's animal farm insurance company......

This is something my company is talking about. 220 employees cost us about 30% over their salaries for insurance.

If we only have to pay 8% payroll tax surcharge to not insure, cost wise the decision is a no brainer.

But the President's public statements haven't mentioned anything about that, so there is no way the surcharge would be set low enough to encourage employers to dump coverage and push more onto government plan.

Exactly. Or the employee portion of the premium will skyrocket. My employer already uses pricing to discourage the people with families from including them on their policy. If the spouse of an employee has health insurance coverage available to them (doesn't matter what the quality of coverage is), not only does the employee have to pay the higher family premium, but an additional amount as well.

Why don't employers just eliminate insurance benefits for employees now? It's not like the employee can't go purchase their own insurance from an existing company, right?

Fair enough.

fwiw, I don't disagree with the suggestion for people to share more of the cost out of pocket. In fact, my employer just announced that all employees will be paying a greater portion of our medical benefits before the end of the year. I'm not complaining: it sure beats getting laid off and losing them entirely.

companies doing this will be at a competitive disadvantage unless they increase the wages paid or offered by the cost of insurance offered by companies competing for employees....

company paid health insurance has been part of our compensation system since wage controls were placed by the federal govt. during WWII (I think I recall that correctly) and companies needed to incent workers to stay with them by providing health care.... later came retirement benefits at no cost to the employee from the largest employers....

This is my concern as well... my company would save oodles by dropping the ocverage we have and simply paying the tax, and perhaps me a little more to purchase my own. There is no way an individual like myself could buy the same quality of care that my employer can provide me, at their price.

You simply cannot compete with a program that will run at a loss. It would be simply a matter of time before most employer coverage is dropped, and the cost of a private plan is too high, thus the migration to the government plan begins, and the costs begint o spin out of control, as being the goverment, they can allow themselves to operate at a loss.

Employer paid insurance is like buying bulk at Costco. The more you buy, the cheaper it is. That's one of the bennies for working for a big company.

Conversely, if that same company can pay significantly less by just paying a tax surcharge and quit offering health insurance to their employees, especially in today's financial climate, you can bet they're going to drop it faster than the proverbial 'hot potato'. Then Obamacare ceases to be an alternative and becomes truly universal health care.

That is the scary part. Our country was built on choice. Making every one in this country conform to one insurance makes us more like France...or Canada. Seriously , is that what you want?

That's why somehow, in addition to eliminating the Obamacare option, we as individuals or as various defined groups (e.g. by professional association, by employer, by neighborhood, etc.) need to somehow be able to cross state lines and shop around for whatever coverage suits us.

And, since the tendency of any insurer is going to be to want to attract the lowest-cost insured (younger, healthier), the combination of HSAs plus [hate to say it, but don't see a way around it] mandatory catastrophic insurance with high co-pay (to cover expensive chronic as well as acute conditions) seems like the best way to go.

As for our tendency to view ourselves as invincible, thereby avoiding all preventive tests? Good publicity about the relative costs of the test vs. the treatment should help.

And, I can't justify offering free care to illegal immigrants....

:::Stands and claps! :::

Their plan should be the litmus test.

Probably common knowledge to most of us, but this caught my eye:

What's most likely to bankrupt you:
Harvard researchers say 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the US in 2007 were caused by health problems -- and 78% of those filers had insurance.

Full story

Will have to read the story later from home.

But the question that jumps instantly to mind is this: Let's just assume that all costs will be fixed. Every medicine and procedure and office visit will have a fixed price. Is Obamacare going to pay for everything for everybody medically speaking?

If not and people will still be responsible for co-pays, etc., do you really think the bankruptcy ratio will change? If so, how, pray tell.

I'll support whatever healthcare the President and Congress come up with that has them on the same plan as me...lead the way, boys, and we'll gladly follow...

http://www.defendyourhealthcare.us

Interesting site that may shed some light on the situation with the proposed health care bill.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, in a blog posting on the White House’s Web site regarding CBO's cost etimates states, “the point of the proposal . . . was never to generate savings over the next decade.”

I guess that answers my question on how costs will be reduced by the current proposal. The answer is they won't.

Obamacare is aimed at the 20% of the population that is not currently covered by some form of insurance/Medicare/Medicaid.

I listened to a very convincing argument this morning for first, expanding existing programs. In my state we have additional state programs that cover children and high risk patients.

Second, get a comprehensive audit department in place to monitor Medicare and all other government programs to cut down on all the fraud thus opening up funding for the expansions listed above.

btw, I believe it's a NYT survey that stated that it's now up to 40% of the country wants BO to focus on the jobs and the economy and worry about healthcare later.

end of life care will become an end of care issue....

just give 'em some pain pills until they die....

as opposed to how chronic illnesses are handled late in life now...

end of life decisions should be strictly between patients, families and doctor --

isn't this how it is now buccs?

how is it where you live?

I agree with you. But I'm saying that the vast majority of patient care for end-of-life patients who have chronic illnesses are centered around pain management.

I was remarking that if that's how it supposedly is going to be it will not be any different that how things are now.

When are end of life decisions made and by whom? That is what will change. For instance can a 100 year old woman get a pacemaker? Obama said she probably should have been given some pills instead of the procedure. Should be noted that woman is 105 today. This happened at one of the President's recent town halls.

And I don't disagree with that either. All I'm saying is that:

"the vast majority of patient care for end-of-life patients who have chronic illnesses are centered around pain management."

But this is the question being posed.