The Glade 4.0

That's OK, the kids'll be insured by the Gov't, right?

WSJ

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

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Holy shitsnacks!

AARP (another healthcare bill supporter) has had to cut their offerings while seeking the ever popular waiver for the law.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I've encountered several patients whose employers have cut coverage. I expect the trend for medium and large businesses continue, unless they have issues attracting talent to their company.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It baffles me how liberals can see this crap happening and say "well something had to be done" and say they still don't have a problem with the bill.

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The Dude abides.

Simple. They're going to point to this crap as a reason we need to go even farther towards fully nationalized healthcare. They aren't going to say they have a problem with the bill because that would be speaking against the move in that direction in the first place, and because a lot of them beleive these problems are what would have happened anyhow because of "teh eb1l insuranZe compan1es oh n03z!!" and that if we'd gone farther this wouldn't have happened.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And I hope each and every person who thinks that has their children go up to them and punch their parents in the mommy daddy button until the twitching stops.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Don't hold your breath.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As I've said before, most liberals believe that government-run healthcare is vastly superior to private health care. The mindset is not that they're taking from the rich to give to the poor, it's that public healthcare is better for everyone, the rich included, so they're doing them a favor by pushing for this. The general justifications are, "Public health care doesn't need to turn a profit." and "Who cares if it's more expensive? Private health care is worthless, they'll always find an excuse not to pay you if you have a real expensive problem." There is also the assumption that the health care regulations are simply ignored by companies, and we need public health care so people who develop a medical problem don't become unemployable. (As obviously, employers will ignore EMTALA and snoop on your medical history and then find a reason to fire or not hire you if you have an expensive health problem.)

I think you're mean HIPAA, not EMTALA.

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The Dude abides.

Love or hate them, pundits like Limbaugh, Beck, Prager and Hannity all called it.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Because there's a very plausible (and honestly, I suspect a more frequently legitimate) alternate explanation: (i) the economy is in rough shape, so some employers simply need to cut costs to stay in business, and (ii) even those employers that don't need to cut know they can cut wages and benefits without worrying that employees will quit and go elsewhere because the labor market sucks so badly. In other words, many employers in the current economy would be cutting health coverage anyway, so in many cases, blaming it on health care reform is most likely just an excuse.

Which isn't to say that the reform law isn't having an impact at the margins. I honestly don't know - been too busy to follow much of anything in the news these days. I just suspect that a sizable percentage of the "don't blame me; it's the government's fault" stories are just p.r. excuses from employers that don't want to admit they chose to make a cut for normal business/economic reasons.

So this.

I don't disagree with your post, but I would be lying if I said I didn't chuckle quietly while reading this and thinking that the "company" in the OP doing this is the SEIU.

Heh. Yeah, I admit, that definitely is chuckle-worthy.

How do you get around the fact that the Healthcare Reform Act incentivizes dropping employer provided plans, particularly self-financed group insurance policies?

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A few assumed this was the goal. Get people on the entitlement train to make it a political third rail then the next step would be public option. Or as has been done, have the ability to regulate the industry through an unaccountable agency who can steer the market towards the public option goal.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I don't, really; I think that's intentional (though admittedly not advertised as such). Like I said, though, it only operates at the margins. The reform law puts a thumb on the scale in favor of some employers dropping coverage, but it's not going to trigger a huge wave in that direction all on its own. At any rate, all I'm saying in the context of this thread is that irrespective of the reform law, many employers would be dropping or reducing coverage in the current economy anyway, so I'm skeptical when they try to say it's because of the new law rather than their own business circumstances.

Not really RD, the costs of losing individual workers saves far more than adjusting even a fairly large group plan.

Dropping benefits just makes the employees you really want to keep go away and thats a loss of control which is not what businesses want.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Nobody is going anywhere in this economy. Even without the law as a convenient scapegoat, companies have reached a tipping point for health care coverage. They've been shifting the costs more and more onto the employees as time has passed, this law and economy just allow them to skip straight to Go and drop health care overall.

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Several people have left my firm to find better jobs elsewhere in this economy because of a pay freeze thats been on for two years.

They have had no problem locating employment.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I suppose it depends on your skillset, but surely you won't argue that your average laborer is effed.

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Nope, especially in construction.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Clearly, the union members need to organize some sort of organization to collectively bargain with their union, so that they will be protected from being abused and oppressed by their union.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I wonder how long it will be until union members form subunions.

Man, I typed that as a joke, but then started thinking about the details... runs pretty scarily parallel. :p