Experts say this bill will increase premiums
Sent from james.courtney@keypoint.us.com’s mobile device from http://www.cnn.com
Under the new health care legislation, experts say the first changes Americans with employer-based insurance will see is in their benefits.
Companies don’t have to make any immediate tweaks to their plans, but they will have to incorporate a few of the federally mandated changes by open enrollment time late in 2010, said Tracy Watts, partner with employee benefits consulting firm Mercer.
The changes made this year will come into effect in 2011, with more phased in over the next few years until the law becomes fully implemented by 2018 or later.
Some of the changes will increase costs for employers, she said. Consequently, companies could share more of that burden by charging employees higher premiums and deductibles.
So here’s what you can to expect in 2011.
Dependent coverage to age 26: This is one of the most significant changes, said Watts.
Currently there are different laws in different states regarding the timeframe for dependent coverage. Typically employers provide coverage for dependents ’till age 22 or 23.
In 2011, employers will have to provide coverage for dependents of employees who don’t have access to other employer-based health care coverage ’till age 26 with the exception of a few states which mandate this coverage until age 28 or 29, she said.
Watts said this measure could raise costs for companies, depending how many workers they have with dependents this age.
“This measure goes into the ‘cost increase’ column for employers and could potentially result in higher premiums for employees overall,” she said.
No lifetime dollar limits: Many employer-based health insurance plans have lifetime maximum limits on insurance of $1 million or $2 million. The new law eliminates all lifetime caps, said Watts.
“This is a very good benefit for employees,” said Watts. “In the event of a catastrophic accident or illness, employees no longer have to worry that their benefit will run out.”
No reimbursement for over-the-counter drugs: Currently, employees can get reimbursed for the money they use to buy over-the-counter drugs from their flexible spending accounts (FSA) or Health Savings Account (HSA) to buy over-the-counter medications.
These accounts typically enable individuals and families to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses not covered by their insurance plans with tax free dollars.
The new law removes reimbursements when the accounts are tapped for buying non-prescription drugs, said Watts.
Higher penalty for misusing Health Savings Accounts: Under the new law, employees who use their HSA money for a non-qualified medical expense will face a higher penalty, said Watts.
“The most frequent example of a non-qualified expense is if you use your HSA money to buy a flatscreen TV,” said Watts.
Report health coverage on W-2 forms: Employers will have to report the value of an employee’s health care plan on W-2 forms.
“This is not the value of your claims but the value of the coverage you elected,” said Watts.
Cap on Flexible Spending Account contributions: Although this change does not kick in until 2013, the new law will limit employee contributions to FSAs to $2,500 a year.
These accounts enable individuals and families to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses not covered by their insurance plans with tax free dollars.
Many employers have their own caps on FSA contributions and the cap for federal employees is $5,000.
“This seems like a significant change but our surveys shows that the average amount put into an FSA is typically $1,500 a year,” said Watts.
Oilfield Math
A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons gas a year. A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480
gallons a year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year. They claim 700,000 vehicles so that’s 224 million gallons saved per year. That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars.
So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million. We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved. I’m pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though!
So how’s that hope and change thing going for ya?
Even the Old Testament prophets knew that big government was bad
1 Samuel 8 10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle [b] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
Is this where we are going? This is what the government is becoming. The progressive movement has been doing this to us for years. God told Samuel to warn Israel about the downside of having a King. But the people clamored for a King to lead them like the other nations of the world had. America is the New Israel.
We clamored for a government like the ones the rest of the world had and now we have it. Progressives have taken over our country and we keep voting for them. Every day they bankrupt us, our children and the future of this great nation. We pay them for the honor of destroying us. Much like the people would pay the King for the honor of enslaving them. We have traded a king for an evil corrupt government. We are slowly (not so slowly anymore) becoming the slaves of the government.
Look what Samuel told Israel! He said the King would take the people’s stuff and give it to the people who the king liked. It’s kind of like pork barrel projects, funding for ACORN and earmarks. He said he’ll take the best people and cattle for his own use. Kind of like the way the government takes a cut of every person’s hard work. Samuel said the king would take 10% of everything a person owed, produced, and earned… our government take WAY more than that.
The death blow. The fatality. The end game.
Obama is intent on destroying the insurance companies. He said in his speech (which was after the speech that was supposed to be his final speech) today in Ohio that they were going to “require insurance companies to proved free preventive care.” FREE PREVENTIVE CARE. F R E E P R E V E N T I VE C A R E!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What does that tell you?????
What do people do when they get something for FREE? My wife nailed it. She said “They Milk it.” MILK IT! And that is exactly what the American People will do. They will go to the doctor for ever scrape, bump, bruise, cough, sneeze, or sniffle that they can pass off as “preventive care.” The cost of preventive care will go up since demand for it is so high, which means the insurance companies will then eat even more costs.
So what do you do when your business is losing money? You have to either raise rates or cut expenses. I’m pretty sure that the Insurance companies won’t be able to raise rates. So their other option is to cut expenses and that means JOBS. Once they start cutting jobs the workload of the remaining employees will drastically rise. This will create an environment where services are delayed and inadequate. This is actually so unacceptable that it is almost not even an option, but let’s just pretend it is. Then what?
You have overworked, underpaid employees doing the jobs of a workforce twice their size to meet a rising demand for a service for which the company is not even going to receive any revenues. But since the company is locked into providing these preventive service free of charge BY LAW there is nothing it can do.
Or is there? Of course, as my wife said again (quite astutely), “Then you Kill yourself.” That’s right honey. You kill yourself, figuratively of course. IN this case, you would close up shop and get out of the insurance business. Your investors would divest the company, and split it up amongst themselves, make a killing and call it a day.
This is exactly what Obama wants. There is no other logical reason for his and the Congress’ actions.
Oh, you have to PASS it before you can find out what is in it…
Well if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I don’t think I would have believed it. You have to PASS the bill before you can see what is in it. Nancy Pelosi is admitting that she doesn’t exactly know what’s in the bill but she knows it’s good and “exciting.” Well I’m convinced! Let’s do this!
When I’m done maybe I’ll get a mail-order bride too. There’s no need to talk to her or meet her, just package one up and ship her to me. I find out what she’s like after I marry her.
Then after that I think I’ll buy a used car online without even so much as a test drive. I can find out what’s wrong with the car AFTER I get it in the drive way.
This is why this is the worst Idea I have heard of. This is so screwed up! We have to allow ourselves to be burdened with the bill and the new laws and regulations it will put on us BEFORE we find out what it says, exactly. Let’s face it. It will be YEARS before we figure out everything that’s in the Healthcare Bill. By then it will be too late to fix any of it.
This is Washington B.S. 101!
Obama rails against insurance companies, why not Medicare?
While Obama is railing against the Insurance companies for denying coverage and claims, maybe he should look at Medicare, which has the highest rejection rate of any healthcare provider. Get your facts straight. Oh that’s right you know the facts but are intentionally misrepresenting them. My bad. I keep forgetting that. Let’s not forget that this is nothing more than an attempt to eliminate private insurance, as Obama said in his own words, and take over all American’s health care… and in essence your entire life.
Hear it from his own words…
Massa? WTF?
I don’t think there is anyone who actually believes that Congressman Massa resigned due to his allegedly improper behavior. In fact, it goes against everything we know about politicians. They never resign until it actually becomes a huge national-level story. This wasn’t anything like that until he told us that he was forced to resign.
I honestly don’t know what to believe. This guy is a total tool bag and he proved it on Glenn Beck’s show tonight. Glenn said it all by saying that he wasted our time. The guy had an hour to prove or at least further explain what he was charging the White House with. He didn’t even come close. He back tracked and blubbered something about how he screwed himself.
That seems to play into the logical side of things. If Massa was truly forced out, then he had nothing to lose. All he had to do was speak the truth. I don’t know if this guy even knows what the truth is. I don’t think he knows what he is.
It makes me wonder… is this what Washington is made of? Holy crap. We’re in more trouble than I thought.
So here are my scenarios:
1. This guy screwed up and resigned before the investigation was plastered all over the news. He was embarrassed or humiliated and then said the White house forced him out as a childish lash out. Probably because the White House had some harsh words for him when he voted against Obamacare.
2. This guy screwed up and was told to change his vote or resign because the WH had the goods on him. Then he resigns, but lashes out against the WH and tells them that they are going to get exposed with what he knows. The WH ignores him and then he shuts up because he doesn’t really know anything.
3. This guy screwed up and was told to change his vote or resign because the WH had the goods on him. Then, knowing that Washington is corrupt he decides to tell all on Glenn Beck. Then something happens to make him change his mind. And he decides to not say anything bad on TV. What was it that would have made him change his mind? You got me. It’s worth looking into. Maybe he got a dead fish in the mail.
The WH denied that they forced him out and Robert Gates blubbered, incoherently about something being silly and ridiculous. He always says that, even when something is completely logical and reasonable. It really doesn’t seem that far of a stretch to believe that a Chicago-style move was placed on Massa, considering the WH’s reputation for being total failures it’s believable that they might try something so stupid. But we will probably never know the truth.
Abortion and the Health Bill
According to a Wall Street Journal Article, the President’s Health Care bill is going to allow federal funding for abortions, something he said he would not do. So what’s the big deal? If anyone remembers the Hyde Amendment which was the first piece of legislation to ban the federal funding o abortion, it came about in the 1970’s when Congress realized that a full third of all abortions in the U.S. were being funded through Medicaid. This did not sit well with Congress so they passed the Hyde Amendment put forth by Rep. Henry Hyde in 1976.
Planned Parenthood and Medicaid were working together in the form they were meant to. To get rid of poor minorities through slavery and abortion. Congress actually stopped it with the Hyde Amendment, but I digress.
Anyway, now the administration is faltering. Claiming that here has to be a balance between healthcare reform and the Hyde Amendment. So far, according to the President current proposals to ban federal funding for abortion doesn’t strike that balance. Which brings up a good point: either the funding for abortion is prohibited or it isn’t. There is no Zen (as Charmaine Yoest says in the WSJ article).
From the Article:
• It would change existing law by allowing federally subsidized health-care plans to pay for abortions and could require private health-insurance plans to cover abortion.
• It would impose a first-ever abortion tax—a separate premium payment that will be used to pay for elective abortions—on enrollees in insurance plans that covers abortions through newly created government health-care exchanges.
• And it would fail to protect the rights of health-care providers to refuse to participate in abortions.
The president’s plan goes further than the Senate bill on abortion by calling for spending $11 billion over five years on “community health centers,” which include Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions.
The bottom line is that the president wants to deploy words that sound soothing like “balance” and “adjust.” Meanwhile, the courts are rendering precedent with stark words like “mandatory.”
When confronted by House Minority Leader John Boehner about abortion funding during the health-care summit last week, the president dropped his head and looked down at the table. How revealing.
Now, it is no secret that I am not a fan of abortion, however, I would never deny someone the right to save their own life through termination of pregnancy. What I can’t understand is why Americans fall for this all the time. The politician says one thing with the intention of doing the exact opposite. President Obama promised that the federal government would not fund abortion, yet his proposals clearly will allow for it. Where’s the change?
Iraqis defy intimidation to vote, attacks kill 26
Come on America, if the Iraqi’s get it then why don’t we? These people are braving mortar fire and grenades to get to the polls and vote! We bitch about it being too cold and standing in line. wake up and get yourself a nice hot cup of perspective. 26 people died today at the polls…AT THE POLLS… and they still stayed there and said no, this is MY country and we’re voting damn it. That is how we need to be. We can’t get discouraged because this guy didn’t win or that piece of legislation got passed. We have to stand up and take this country back from the politician elitists that think they can run our lives. What a bunch of whiners we are. We should look at Iraq as an example and just remember who the hell we are. When our troops come home, we have a duty to have them come home to the country they think they’re fighting for. If we give away all of their freedoms while they’re at war, then what was it all for? We have a responsibility to get up off our asses, turn off “The Bachelor” and start thinking about how we want to live. Right now there is a structure being built that will transform this country into something other than America, and we have to fix it. We owe our troops and children that much. weather it is healthcare or cap and trade or whatever… we have to put our government back in its place and that is to serve the people and not themselves. Everything they are doing right now is a way to enact some form of control over us and that is not how we as Americans want to live. If Iraqi’s can brave mortar fire and grenades at their polling stations, we can put down the Twinkie, turn off the television long enough to fight for our freedom, which is being sucked away from us every day.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_iraq
States consider banning credit checks on job applicants
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/01/1782965/states-consider-banning-credit.html
I chose this article because when I read the title, I said to myself, “Well THERE’S a terrible idea!” Of course I was hoping that the title was misleading, but it wasn’t.
Under federal law, employers must get written permission to conduct a credit check on a prospective employee. According to the article, 16 states are considering banning the practice outright. According to a 2008 survey by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, workplace fraud cost the US $994 billion in 2008. That is the operating budget of a country Western Europe. It could be rounded up to $1 Trillion which would be the cost of the hotly debated Healthcare bill.
Many states are considering the ban because they feel that it is hard enough for people to get jobs in the current economy as it is and they feel that that employers use the credit checks to “trap people in debt” by using their credit history against them.
If only the state legislatures knew a few facts before they started debating whether to ban one of the most effective means of fraud detection available.
First of all, while most companies do use credit checks, only about 13% use them on new hires. The credit checks are actually used on current employees in order to detect fraud. How do they detect fraud through a credit check? They can usually catch the perpetrator when they are living well beyond their means for one answer.
Secondly, people volunteer for the credit checks, it’s not like they have guns to their heads. And then there is the cognitive mistake that the legislatures are making. Companies have a right to ask that their employees submit to credit checks as a means of protecting their assets and property. Legislatures would put unnecessary risk on those assets which are private property by banning the credit checks. Something that I don’t think they can really do, legally.
Lastly, the legislatures seem to think that banning the checks will somehow get people back to work. This won’t happen if workplace fraud increases and companies start losing money. In fact the exact opposite would happen. People would lose those jobs. But legislators are worried about keeping their own jobs at the present moment, however a move like this would ironically end their stays in the legislature.
Somehow, these legislatures seem to believe that people have more of a right to a job than private entities have to their own property. This puts private enterprise at serious risk. Legislators must know their place and not put politically popular ideas ahead of sound financial and economic policy. Banning the credit check will not create any more jobs than were there in the first place, but instead it will degrade the integrity of the companies who offer those jobs. Legislators must think that it is perfectly acceptable to pass reckless legislation and appear to be creating jobs at the expense of entire companies.
