There are a lot of other factors at work beyond Obama’s re-election. But on the day after the election, the election was the primary driving factor, and it was clearly perceived as a negative.
Nobody is claiming that anyone based business strategy on dips in the stock price.
But the same negative outlook that triggers drops in stock price is the same one that triggers layoffs. I introduced the stock price issue to observe that the negative outlook which produced the layoffs was shared by many, as evidenced by the stock price.
You’ve misunderstood the exchange, and the context of the discussion. No one is claiming that ACA has anything to do with coal layoffs. Obama’s energy policies are what is being blamed here.
This is an issue which is largely tangential to the main discussion in this thread, introduced by Ludovic, in post #7.
So why do you think employers offer health coverage, if they can get hundreds of people lining up for coverage without it? Out of the goodness of their hearts?
You are oversimplifying a more complex picture. Employers offering or not offering coverage is something that varies by industry, location etc. In cases where employers offer coverage, it’s because in their particular situation they need to do it to attract and retain employees. That’s all. If hundreds of qualified people would be lining up for jobs in that industry that did not offer coverage, they would all drop it.
And the extent to which employers will be able to attract and retain qualified employees without offering coverage will increase significantly if there are viable alternatives on exchanges.
I agree with this except for the word “always”. It will start with “a few companies”. Probably the weakest ones. Next will come the next-weakest ones. And so on.
No, because some companies don’t just want qualified people, they want the best people. I didn’t say no potential employees could refuse jobs without coverage, just that it’s clearly not necessary to offer coverage in order to fill jobs and companies could eliminate it now if they wanted to (and many have) and still fill jobs. Most people aren’t the cream of the crop.You keep talking about employers offering coverage to attract and retain employees, but you keep leaving out the word “best” or even “better”. The cream of the crop won’t take a job without either employer coverage or where the employer pays most of the cost of going on the exchange because he doesn’t have to. Some company will meet his demands becaue they want him badly enough. Five rungs down is another story and that guy may already have no coverage .
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There will always be companies that offer more and better benefits than their competition to get attract and retain better employees. Whether it’s health coverage, on-site day care , gym memberships - it doesn’t matter. If it will attract better employees , some company will offer that benefit.
I work for a company of close to 100,000 employees. The medical insurance plan is self-funded by the company, which means when you make a claim, the company pays, not an insurance company. About half of our employees are part-time and not eligible for the coverage; about 40% or less of the remaining employees are actually enrolled in the medical plan (the rest are covered by spouses’ plans, or private insurance, or not covered at all). So basically out of 100,000 employees we have about 20,000 on the medical plan which costs the company millions of dollar a year in claims and administrative costs.
I’m not involved in the post-ACA planning, but I’m sure my company is questioning the value of offering a plan that costs so much when they could probably pay the fines and maybe even raise the pay of the employees for less money than they are spending on health insurance.
There’s not going to be any mass-exodus of companies out of healthcare, but Obamacare might accelerate the trend away from it. Unemployment is still high. With rare exceptions, there are hundreds or thousands of people who are perfectly happy to take your job if you’re not happy with it. The balance of power is with the employers right now, and will be for at least the next several years.
As for retaining employees, I expect that companies will use raises or bonuses to keep key employees, with the understanding that the raise is meant to offset the cost of healthcare. A decade from now, companies that still provide healthcare will be much more the exception than the rule.
Long term, I would predict that if more companies dropped Health Insurance, it would only increase support for Universal Health Care.
So go ahead, billionaires! Whine and protest Obamacare by dropping coverage for your people. We’ll just take the entire thing out of your hands and hit you with a mandatory UHC Payroll Tax.
Our company has about 20 employees. We pay 100% of the health care premium for everyone who doesn’t have other insurance (military, spouse, etc). I’m absolutely certain we don’t “have to” do it. Nor do we have to give them holiday bonuses. We provide health insurance even though it’s a huge expense, because it’s the right thing to do. Our employees work hard and deserve good pay and benefits. We could fire them all tomorrow and hire new people for 20% less salary and a lot less in benefits. I wouldn’t feel good about that.
I would feel good if everyone had government provided health insurance and we could save that $30,000 per month. Hell, you could even raise our taxes a bit to pay for it.
It’s the same fundamental equation. The laws of supply and demand apply. If it’s a really really big deal to the “best” employees that the company have something, then the company will be willing to pay more for it than if it’s just something that they’d prefer to have.
Common sense does not support the argument you are making, and neither does history. Other benefits that employers have offered for much the same reasons as health care coverage have been dropping despite companies wanting to attract “the best employees”. Most notably defined benefit pensions and retiree medical care.
And it’s worth paying specific attention to retiree medical coverage, because it most closely approximates the impact of the exchanges. Most companies no longer offer this coverage, but there is a significant difference between pre and post 65 coverage, with far more employers offering the former than the latter. And the difference is that it’s very hard for people to get individual coverage pre-65, while on the post-65 side there is Medicare. The impact of the exchanges (if they turn out to be viable) is to move from a situation more comparable to pre-65 to one more comparable to post-65.
All these things cost a fraction of healthcare. And at that, many make the employees pay for them.
I fail to see why any company that is already offering health insurance would stop buying it under Obamacare. If it is cheaper, why haven’t they stopped before Obamacare? They obviously don’t think it is necessary to keep and attract good employees. Why wait for Obamacare?
Because some people who run companies actually give a damn about other people. Right now, for many, if the employer doesn’t offer coverage the person is screwed because they’re priced out of realistic individual policies. With Obamacare, however, an employer can more easily rationalize dropping group coverage because there will (at least in theory) be an actual viable alternative for the employees.
So these employers think Obamacare will be at least as good, and no more expensive than the private insurance they were offering before? Or do they think their employees won’t notice? I still think that is unlikely. Employers either believe offering insurance is necessary to attract and retain good employees, or they don’t. If they do, they won’t risk alienating employees by throwing them into the state exchanges. If they don’t, they would have stopped offering it by now.
There are actually considerable numbers of small companies, you know?
And this whole business about attracting the “best” employees - sure, in boom times that applies. But how do you explain that fewer and fewer employers are offering health insurance every year? (This was previously brought up by an earlier poster in this thread).
Right now there are tens of thousands of highly qualified people who can’t find work, or can’t find work commensurate with their experience and education. After a few years those people will have run out of assets and savings and will have to take whatever work they can in order to continue to survive. Rather like myself - I used to have a salary at the top of my profession, fantastic benefits, I even have a defined benefit pension coming when I get old enough. Now? I work for $9/hour with no employer sponsored benefits whatsoever, not even paid sick days. Why? It beats being homeless. How did I get here? The Great Employee Shedding that heralded the Great Recession.
As I mentioned previously - I was able to get into a state-sponsored plan not too dissimilar to Obamacare (though I’m sure our Republican governor would shudder at my saying that). It’s not perfect, but it sure as hell beats NO healthcare.
Maybe I’m not being clear. My argument is not that the trend of employers not providing health insurance will not continue. I’m sure it will. But I don’t think it has anything to do with Obamacare - I don’t believe that there are many companies (if any) that *would have continued to provide coverage * but will now end it because of Obamacare. I am sure there are numerous employers who would have stopped providing coverage with or without Obamacare.
But even with your example, some companies still offer retiree health coverage and some even offer it post 65. You’ve pretty much made my point that
Now, if the cost of paying the fine for NOT having health insurance is less than the cost of PROVIDING health insurance which way do you think the average big corporation is going to go? Given that it’s already been asserted that such large companies don’t really care about people, and there is currently surplus of qualified employees for most types of jobs these days, some of them quite desperate.
You seem to have wandered away from the premise I was arguing. If they stopped providing health insurance before Obamacare, they can’t very well stop offering it after Obamacare now, can they? The whole point was, will employers stop offering health insurance after Obamacare. The answer is no, because, as you pointed out, if they can drop it, they already have.
No, I’m saying if they find it’s less expensive to drop it than to keep it they’re going to drop it. It all hinges on whether or not the fines or the premiums will be more expensive. It’s all about dollars and cents.
Dollars and cents, and retaining valued employees. Look, if it was just saving the cost of premiums, they would have done it already, because there isn’t any penalty; it is actually more expensive to not offer insurance under Obamacare than it is now. So why would a company wait until Obamacare to stop health insurance? It’s all about dollars and cents.
As a small business owner, I still offer insurance because I value my employees, but every year as the premiums go up, I either have to slide down the percentage of their premiums that I would pay, or pick a cheaper level of coverage. ATM, I cover about 60% of all premiums (regardless of their age bracket), and annually that’s about $120k. If Obamacare started in 2013, my penalty would be about HALF that amount. I guess it depends on what the exchanges offer in coverage…if they could do it better, then I will gladly pay the penalty.
OTOH, I think the $2k per employee penalty is not going to stay at $2k…I believe this will be increased in a few short years after they have woefully underestimated the cost of this. But I would like to see more info on rates and coverages before I cut the cord. Would love to give raises to the employees with the difference IF I am guaranteed that the penalty will not be increased in the next 5-10 years. But, the devil is in the details, and I am still unsure about what to do.