Will Employers Be Required To Pay For Employees Health Insurance Or Just Be Required To Provide Access To It?
In the house bill?
Lots of companies take part or all of the cost of health insurance out of their employees checks.
Will this practice stop because of Obama’s health care plans? And force employers to pay 100% of health insurance costs?
What about deductibles & co-pays?
I think that if this bill passes it could have an effect on how much employers are willing to pay for their employee insurance plans. Ex. an employer who pays their employee’s premiums may not wish to continue this.
I’ve never heard of any employer paying the deductible or co-pay however. That is the responsibility of the insured.
Regardless of whatever the Final Bill says, it will cost the Employees Much More, then the Employers:
Congressional advocates of the latest health care reform proposal claim that it will not cost ordinary Americans more–the costs will be borne by “the rich” and by employers. After all, both the House and the Senate versions require employers who do not provide health benefits to pay higher taxes.
But the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently reported what economists have long known: Regardless of who is formally required to pay, the burden of these taxes and costs will ultimately fall primarily on employees through lower wages. An employer mandate does not give workers without health insurance something for nothing but rather forces them to purchase it out of their wages whether they like it or not–and no matter how low those wages are. Congressional rhetoric to the contrary, much of the burden of paying for an employer mandate will fall on ordinary Americans, and lower-income workers will be hit the hardest.
Remember that the Medicare program will include all medically necessary care. In Canada, we have a medicare system that does just that. It doesn’t cover everything. So, most companies still have health plans that cover ‘non-essential’ medical services.
The cost for the medicare program will come from taxes. Employers don’t pay directly for its cost. Non-essential services will still be discretionary; each company will decide what they offer.
I think some companies will decide that it costs less for them to just pay the fine/tax than pay for healthcare. Therefore dropping all of their employees from the private plan, forcing them into the public option.
Then those same people will realize that it is cheaper to pay the fine/tax than to pay for a premium. AND since the government can NOT deny you coverage when you have a pre-existing condition there will be NO incentive for the individual to buy the insurance. THey will wait until they are sick and then get on the govt. plan.
DOES anyone see the problem with this scenario????
Employers can either pay for insurance OR pay $750.00 per year fine & move us on to Pelosi Care. Which of course they will all do. This will effectively shut down private healthcare insurance & lead us all to government insurance. By the way- we will then have to pay for our government healthcare. If we don’t we will be fined – if we don’t pay fine, we can go to jail. Pelosi bill.
WHO KNOWS! The house sure doesn’t know and they wrote the damn thing.
Besides, IF this is ever passed it will be very different than it is right now. While the house passed it, barely, the senate is a different matter. They have their own version and it might not even come up for a vote due to lack of votes.
So, say it passes – the two bills are made into one and then that has to pass in both the house & the senate. But we are looking at MAYBE early next year and then it’s getting close to the 2010 midterms and the dweebs are going to be afraid of voter backlash (they should be)!
Who knows, As soon as they post the bill maybe we will know.
Current Insurance policies will go unaffected.