McD's May Cancel Insurance due to ObamaCare

Maybe you shouldn't present as truth events that "may" happen, based on speculative journalism. We've been down this road before.

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The OP and thread title said "may", making it clear from the outset that the subject under discussion was speculative.

 

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Which makes its posting rather pointless.

 

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The Journal's rebutal opinion piece was a very lame and biased piece of nonsense. The bottom line is that the Journal's original post was false and its rebutal was very biased and far from honest....intended to scare the average Joe and Jane at the expense of honesty.

In 2014 the so called Obamacare law does set minimum coverage standards for healthcare and those minimums are far above those currently offered by McDonalds. A 1k or a 10k cap on a health insurance policy is laughable. If you have one of those plans you had better hope you never get ill or wind up in a hospital and need surgery or a serious medical treatment.

 

The standards come into effect before 2014. Indeed, the Obama administration has already issued 30 waivers which allow companies to ignore the standards imposed by Obamacare. Otherwise many people might have lost coverage altogether. The problem is that the insurance exchanges will would give people whose health plans have been outlawed by Obamacare some other option don't come into effect until 2014.

And while I agree with you that these "mini-med" policies are practically worthless, I don't believe the government has the right to tell private citizens what kind of medical insurance they must buy. Not in a free country, anyway.

Putting that issue aside, if they were to establish a minimum standard, it should be minimal. Something along the lines of a high deductible catastrophic plan. One could reasonably argue that requiring that kind of a plan prevents you from racking up a bunch of medical bills you can't pay and becoming a burden on society.

But the standards under Obamacare go way beyond anything reasonable or justifiable and amount to the government dictating exactly what kind of coverage everyone should have with fines for anyone whose insurance isn't up to par and taxes for anyone whose insurance is better than the government thinks we deserve.

 

The interesting thing is that the wavers are only good for one year, can anyone say election year politics?

To date, the administration has given about 30 insurers, employers and union plans, responsible for covering about one million people, one-year waivers on the new rules that phase out annual limits on coverage for limited-benefit plans, also known as “mini-meds.” Applicants said their premiums would increase significantly, in some cases doubling or more.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.co...vers-issued-to-30-companies-and-other-groups/

 

Let's do a thought experiment. Let's image a single 25-year-old working at McDonald's and choosing the lesser of the two mini-med plans offered by the company:

So he's paying $728 per year in premiums for a plan with a $2,000 benefit cap. Since one could at least argue that this is slightly better than nothing, let's say HHS continues to grant one-year waivers on the new federal requirements through 2014 so that our hypothetical employee can retain that coverage until then.

Now let's imagine in 2014 the waivers stop. Perhaps McDonald's then opts not to provide better coverage and our hypothetical employee enters his new state health insurance exchange. It looks like he's likely to be making less than $8 per hour. But we're thinking of 2014 so let's suppose he works full-time and makes just over $8/hour so that he's making about $17,000 per year. If we check out KFF's subsidy calculator, we see that they estimate that our single 25-year-old making $17,000 in 2014 dollars (and assuming he's in a medium cost area) will be paying $658 for his coverage in the exchange.

That is to say, he'll be paying less money for significantly more comprehensive coverage (coverage that he's free to choose from the various offerings in his state exchange). Not a bad deal for the low-wage worker.

 

You haven't said why that's not reasonable or why it's bad.

 

The bottom line is that there will be universal access to good healthcare under the healthcare reform law....something that does not exist today. And the costs of healthcare willl be spread over virtually all of members of the work force which is much better than our current set up.

 

On the other hand, you aren't willing to provide disease and injury protection as you do crime and fire protection, through a taxation system (you object to that so strongly you are willing to pay twice as much for your medical insurance, on top of the equivalent in taxes that such a system would cost, to avoid the horrifying prospect).

So basically you regard medical care as something all of society (the schools, roads, libraries, hard working children of the poor, etc) provides for the upper classes, as a reward for their contributions or status as heirs. An expensive service that one must earn.

And you will block, politically, any other arrangement the rest of us would prefer. That's how we got stuck with Obamacare - the better alternatives were blocked by your political faction.

And of course as things continue to get worse, cost and service wise, your political faction (which includes the corporate executives of the McDonalds fast food empire, in their health care decisions and employee policies) will blame the misbegotten inadequacy they stuck us with for all of the bad things they do so very, very reluctantly and profitably.

 

Cheaper burgers!! Go Obi GO!!!