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Ramification of healthcare reform is all over the news. Pelosi wasn't kidding when she said they have to pass the bill first to know what is in it. First came the 12.5% rise in employer sponsored plans. Mine has been in the 5-6% in the past but I'll soon find out. Then there are these. So much for looking after the "little" people.
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U.S. restaurants have asked the federal government to waive health overhaul rules that may force companies to abandon low-cost “mini-med” insurance plans used by 1.4 million minimum-wage and part-time employees.
McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant chain, yesterday said it may be forced to seek alternative plans to cover 30,000 workers if it can’t get a waiver. The companies are seeking exemptions from two health-law mandates. One requires plans to spend at least 80 percent of member premiums on medical care. The other prevents companies from capping yearly coverage for each worker. Mini-med programs are designed to offer a low- cost way to cover part-time employees with limited benefits.
Without waivers, “mini-med plans would either no longer be offered or lead to a significant increase in premiums,” the National Restaurant Association wrote in an Aug. 27 letter to U.S. health officials asking that all of its members be exempted. “Restrictions found in the regulations would infringe both the spirit and the letter of the law,” the letter said.
Health insurance costs could rise as much as 500 percent for restaurants with more than 50 employees if all employees participate in a company-sponsored plan, said Todd Gordon, president of insurance broker The Benefits Group Inc.
‘Frightening Time’
“It’s a frightening time for any company with a small number of salaried employees and a large number of hourly employees,” the Atlanta-based Gordon said in a telephone interview.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-30...cmpid=yhoo
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I've also heard that if you own gold, there is something in the HC bill that says you must report the amount you currently own.
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blog...-out-wrong
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius says a report in the Wall Street Journal that McDonald's may drop its limited benefits health insurance plans for 30,000 workers is "flat out wrong." The Journal reported this morning:
"McDonald's, in a memo to federal officials, said 'it would be economically prohibitive for our carrier to continue offering' the mini-med plan unless it got an exemption from the requirement to spend 80% to 85% of premiums on benefits. [...]
"Federal officials say there's no guarantee they can grant mini-med carriers a waiver. They say the answer may not come by November, when many employers require employees to sign up for the coming year's benefits."
Sebelius suggested that McDonald's may in fact get a waiver from HHS that would enable the fast-food giant to continue offering limited benefits plans to its employees. But neither Sebelius nor McDonald's officials have ruled out the possibility that the company would drop such insurance coverage, which is what the Journal claimed.
"The McDonald's story is flat out wrong," Sebelius said this morning at a breakfast meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor (video here). "I’m sorry they weren’t more accurate in their reporting."
"The McDonald's H.R. director Steve Russell has put out a statement flatly denying the statement that they are considering withdrawing from the insurance market," Sebelius said. But Russell didn't say the company isn't "considering" dropping the "mini-med" plans. Russell merely said in a statement this morning that it's "false" to say "we plan to drop health care coverage for our employees."
"These reports," Russell continued, "are purely speculative and misleading."
This morning, Sebelius outlined the two-step process by which McDonald's may get an exemption.
"One is a waiver about limits," Sebelius said. "We have that in our administrative authority. And McDonald's came into hhs and discussed that with our folks two weeks ago, and within 48 hours we approved their waiver."
But Sebelius explained it is too early to grant McDonald's the second waiver it may need to find it economically possible to continue offering these plans. "The medical loss ratio issue is one that isn't even settled," said Sebelius. "We do not have the report yet from National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which by law has to inform our regulations. We haven't written a reg., we can't waive the reg. that doesn't even exist. We have assured the folks at McDonald's and others that as soon as we have a regulation that has a process in it we will begin those discussions."
Also, mini-med plans are about as close to not being insured as you can get and still be called medical insurance (e.g., MacDonald's "employees who go with the minimum plan pay $14 a week for a policy that won't cover more than $2,000 in medical bills a year. Employees who opt for the "generous" option pay about $32 a week for a policy that maxes out at $10,000" ). Because these plans are so small, they will have a somewhat harder time meeting the "must commit 80% to 85% of premium dollars to actual patient care", and as said above, HHS is working with the companies to accommodate their concerns.
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no, no, no, no, all gold and silver has to be turned in .
$600.00 maximum per person as of 2012.
Obama anti-hoarding amendment coming before then, just like Roosevelt's. :devil:
starting on January 1st in 2012, U.S. federal law will require coin and bullion dealers to report to the Internal Revenue Service all gold and silver coin purchases and sales greater than $600.
Just another section of 1099 applied to anything over $600.00 that's going to create a mountain of paperwork if it doesn't get amended.
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Ted King wrote:
Also, mini-med plans are about as close to not being insured as you can get and still be called medical insurance (e.g., MacDonald's "employees who go with the minimum plan pay $14 a week for a policy that won't cover more than $2,000 in medical bills a year. Employees who opt for the "generous" option pay about $32 a week for a policy that maxes out at $10,000" ). .
That's exactly the kind of junk that HCR needed to address, and did. Very large, highly profitable companies that offer that mess to low wage hourly employees and call it "medical insurance." What a joke. These people should technically be counted as uninsured and on the public dole because $2,000 won't cover a hospital visit, to say the least, it won't even cover a lot of out patient procedures.
So companies like McDonalds have for years relied on taxpayers to subsidize their workers' healthcare while making billions in profits on their labor. It's about paying a fair share.
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Health care reforms that are in place now and affecting premiums account for 1 to 2% of the increase. Personally I'm happy to pay that if it means no more parents get told their sick children are not eligible for coverage. That former way of doing business I find morally repugnant.
The factor driving the bigger part of premiums is that the recession has led so many healthy people to drop coverage. If insurance companies have fewer paying customers, as they do now for the first time in US history, their costs go up to cover the remaining customers, a larger percentage of whom fall into that "expensive and sick" category.
The only way to make coverage fair and reasonable is to have everyone covered, all the time. You can't just buy in when you need it, that's not a sustainable or affordable system, as we've seen.
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Another good reason why we should join the rest of the civilized world in having a single payer system.
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Spock wrote:
Another good reason why we should join the rest of the civilized world in having a single payer system.
Stop making sense. It doesn't go over well in this forum.
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Grace62 wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
Also, mini-med plans are about as close to not being insured as you can get and still be called medical insurance (e.g., MacDonald's "employees who go with the minimum plan pay $14 a week for a policy that won't cover more than $2,000 in medical bills a year. Employees who opt for the "generous" option pay about $32 a week for a policy that maxes out at $10,000" ). .
That's exactly the kind of junk that HCR needed to address, and did. Very large, highly profitable companies that offer that mess to low wage hourly employees and call it "medical insurance." What a joke. These people should technically be counted as uninsured and on the public dole because $2,000 won't cover a hospital visit, to say the least, it won't even cover a lot of out patient procedures.
So companies like McDonalds have for years relied on taxpayers to subsidize their workers' healthcare while making billions in profits on their labor. It's about paying a fair share.
So how does the new law make McDonald's offer better insurance? What you have done is make little people lose what meager insurance they do have with no plans to pick them up. All this shows that collectivism needs force to make it work.
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