Today's Obamacare victims: UPS to drop 15,000 spouses from insurance, cites Obamacare United Parcel Service Inc. plans to remove thousands of spouses from its medical plan because they are eligible for coverage elsewhere. The Atlanta-based logistics company points to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as a big reason for the decision, reports Kaiser Health News. The decision comes as many analysts are downplaying the Affordable Care Act's effect on companies such as UPS, noting that the move reflects a long-term trend of shrinking corporate medical benefits, Kaiser Health News reports. But UPS repeatedly cites Obamacare to explain the decision, adding fuel to the debate over whether it erodes traditional employer coverage, Kaiser says. Rising medical costs, âcombined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost,â UPS said in a memo to employees. According to Kaiser, UPS (NYSE: UPS) told white-collar workers two months ago that 15,000 working spouses eligible for coverage by their own employers would be excluded from the UPS plan in 2014. UPS expects the move, which applies to non-union U.S. workers only, to save about $60 million a year, company spokesman Andy McGowan said. The health law requires large employers to cover employees and dependent children, but not spouses or domestic partners, Kaiser adds. Kaiser said the Obama administration would not respond directly to UPS' statements, but said that employer coverage increased when Massachusetts implemented its own version of the health overhaul. "The health care law will make health insurance more affordable, strengthen small businesses and make it easier for employers to provide coverage to their workers," said Joanne Peters, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier this week, Forever 21 Inc. became the latest national company to cut employee hours to counter the impact of Obamacare, according to Policymic.com. Atlanta-based AAA Parking, a parking garage operator that employs more than 1,600 companywide, moved about half of its 500 full-time hourly employees to part-time status on April 15, in response to the law. http://bit.ly/14iDFRy
We are a country of crises, but we resist change. Effective action often doesn't come out of Washington until there is a true crisis. What we have so far in U.S. Healthcare legislation is just a total mess created by political wrangling in an effort to placate both one's voting constituents and the special interests that furnish the money for ones next election campaign. The medical Cartel is firmly entrenched, and well protected by government regulation and the skillful lobbying of the hugely lucrative medical industry. Dismantling this financially powerful, political juggernaut won't come easily. It is conceivable that our best chance at a fix for America's broken, bloated, ineffective, inaccessible, and horribly expensive healthcare would be a true crisis. Apparently, having medical costs as the number one cause of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. is not considered to be nearly enough in the way of crisis. In that regard, perhaps every step along the way that makes the problems more acute, and even more apparent, will ironically be a baby step in the right direction. When the cost , inaccessibility, ineffectiveness, inefficiency and level of medical screw-ups become so great that even the wealthy begin to recognize that there is actually a problem, something useful may be done. Until then I would expect costs to increase and quality of care to continue to deteriorate. The U.S. is currently 37th among nations in the quality of its healthcare. Perhaps if we can manage to slip another 20 slots or so the plutocrats will begin to take notice. Possibly if we slip below Botswana we won't have to listen to "We have the Best Health Care in the World" anymore. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0910064 Sorry, I got carried away. slipping below Botswana will probably be perfectly acceptable. I should have said Malawi.
no campaign contributions / bribes term limits no irs -- that will start to restore our govt. but lets put the blame where its due Pelosi Reid Obama and all those democrats who sold out to their insurance company masters. They could have gone single payer but they gave gdp destruction for some campaign cash. They should all be dismissed from Congress for that act of betrayal. Pelosi's words should go down in history.
The IMPORTANT parts likely will work as intended... just not those having anything to do with actual healthcare services.
Do you REALLY believe that? 37th? Did you know that the US has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the world. Do you know why? Because we report all live births even if the child dies within minutes. In Japan and other countries if the child dies in the first 24 hrs its not counted as a live birth, its counted as a miscarriage. From a letter on the article......... Fully 61% of the numbers that went into that ranking exercise were not observed but simply imputed from regressions based on as few as 30 actual estimates from among the 191 WHO member countries. Where the United States is concerned, data were available only for life expectancy and child survival, which together account for only 50% of the attainment measure. Moreover, the âresponsivenessâ component of attainment cannot be compared across countries, and the estimates of responsiveness for some countries were manipulated. This is not simply a problem of incomplete, inaccurate, or noncomparable data; there are also sound reasons to mistrust the conceptual framework behind the estimates, since it presupposes a production function for health system outcomes that depends only on a country's expenditure on health and its level of schooling, ignoring all cultural, geographic, and historical factors
Singapore Is The New Chile "Remember the 2005 Social Security debate? George W. Bush had just been returned to office; his campaign was focused on national security and social issues â as I like to say, he ran as Americaâs defender against gay married terrorists â but as soon as the returns were in, he declared that he had a mandate to ⦠privatize Social Security. "During the war of ideas that followed, conservatives repeatedly pointed to the example of Chile, with its privatized retirement scheme, as a shining role model for America to follow. Nonetheless, American voters, it turned out, really really didnât like the idea of meddling with Social Security, and the Bush campaign fizzled away into slow debacle. "And then a funny thing happened: it turned out that the Chileans didnât like their system either; it was massively reformed in 2008: "The cornerstone of the new law sets up a basic universal pension as a supplement to the individual accounts system. "In other words, Chile moved its system a substantial way towards being like, um, Social Security. "In the health reform debate, Singapore has played much the same role for conservatives that Chile played on Social Security â once again it was a small, far away country of which we know nothing, which supposedly had a wonderful health system based on free market principles. As Aaron Carroll has been pointing out, Singaporeâs actual system is much less free-market, and involves much more government intervention, than legend has it. In any case, however, guess what: it turns out that Singapore isnât happy with the system, and has just reformed it in a way that makes it much more like ⦠Obamacare." More >>
Whether it should be 40th or 25th really does not matter does it? I've received medical care in other countries. From my anecdotal experience, their medical care is better, much better. There are 14 industrialized nations counting the U.S. That's the group we compare ourselves to. We are without any doubt whatsoever, by standard measures, dead last among that group, and nearly 100% higher in cost than the highest cost nation in that group!