Employer-provided health plans may disappear
By Neil Irwin, New York Times
The days of Americans getting health insurance through their employers may be numbered — and the change could be just as profound as the shift of employers forcing employees to manage their own retirement savings.
As the Affordable Care Act goes from thousands of pages of legalese to actual, real-life public policy, the future of employer-provided health insurance is one of the most fascinating questions. Will employers call for — and their workers accept — the practice of buying health insurance through government exchanges? How much will companies save, and will they pass those savings onto employees? Will it make workers more mobile and ready to shift jobs, or will employer-paid health insurance become a sought-after perk?
The answers go to the heart of how things work in a sector that is one-eighth of the American economy. A new report gives some hints of how large the impact might be.
By 2020, about 90 percent of American workers who now receive health insurance through their employers will be shifted to government exchanges created by the health law, according to a projection by S&P Capital IQ, a research firm serving the financial industry.
About time, this was never a good pairing, and has run well past it’s time.
Buying health insurance through this government? Being shifted to (have to) buy through government exchanges? New health care LAW. The law as imposed by this government, and if you don’t follow it, they will fine you and TAKE your fine out of your earned tax returns. You will have no choice. The government WILL take your money by force. Yes, the same president who is systematically ruining what used to be America. AND, the SHEEP will follow….right off the edge of the cliff.
Oh, cj has a new name…
Hey CJ, I mean Kit, where do you get YOUR health care? Fess up, it is likely government subsidized in some way.
I am tired of everyone just going to the ER on OUR dime and getting free health care. It’s time to pay or play.
Drive a car? Gotta register it and have insurance.
Want to reap the low hanging fruit from society PLUS get free health care through the ER? No more. Sign up for a plan CJ and get off the gravy train. You are a boring mix of paranoia and ignorance, drunk off of Faux News and blind to your own participation in everything you supposedly hate.
I somewhat agree with Atomic about people getting primary care through an ER, etc. Let’s not forget that it was government that mandated doctors, hospitals & other providers give care to those who couldn’t pay. They then had to raise their rates to the rest of us to offset the cost of the non-payers. That happened something like 35+ years ago, maybe a bit longer. Being forced into government designed health care isn’t necessarily the answer either if you honestly look at the problems with socialized medicine in other countries.
The ACA and medicaid expansions are dropping costs and is a real success for those who need it most. The latter is a government funded plan however the exchanges are merely a vehicle to match up the insured with private insurance companies. One day we’ll all look back and wonder how we ever managed without it.
Dropping costs, K9?? How ’bout some actual numbers, please? And NOT numbers provided by the Obama Administration. Give us numbers provided by actual doctors and other medical providers, and maybe some insurance companies.
My premiums have gone from about $10K a year to $17K a year for the same plan, for two people. NOTHING is costing me less. Not doctor visits, not meds, nothing.
Where are you getting your “facts” from, anyway???
k9 it is way to early to make ststements that it is dropping costs, we wont know numbers onr way or the other for years. if what you meant was it was dropping cost for people on subsidized plans you r correct. if wnat you meant was it will over the long term because people will get annual checkups and catch problems sooner maybe, maybe not.
One thing we all know for certain-the for-profit healthcare system was completely out of control and dysfunctional-rates were skyrocketing and people were being excluded if they got sick and made a claim-the ACA was sabotaged so many times by the teabag wing of the GOP that it is a flawed system-but its better than the heartless insurance and pharma thieves running the show-hopefully some form of single payer healthcare-like the rest of the civilized world has- will eventually be put in place
HOW, exactly, was it sabotaged?? What did they do? Zip. The plan sabotaged itself because it was messed up to begin with.
Do any of you know what “Moral Hazard” means? You should, because THAT is the cause of most of the problems with medical care in this country. It’s not an issue of needing to provide more insurance to people; THAT is the problem, not the solution.
When people are not responsible for the choices they make, it creates problems. By having insurance companies (and often employers) as middle men covering the payments between doctors and their patients, people don’t have the responsibility of making wise choices in their medical care. They don’t even KNOW what stuff costs! Heck, ask at the lab next time you get a blood draw: “How much does this test cost?” They won’t be able to tell you because they don’t know! It all depends on which insurance you have. The prices get jacked around, depending on who is paying. The absurdity of the system is off the charts. And obamacare will not fix it, it will only exacerbate it.
Dog you are one sick, mean puppy.
Why is it okay for you people to walk in, hurl an insult without making ANY point about the issue, and leave?
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser” ~ Socrates
We think at the end of your mean comments you should then go look in the mirror and read them out loud.
LTN staff