Saturday, May 04, 2013
The moral puzzlement of ObamaCare
Company XYZ, a major business makes the deliberate decision to cut all part-timers' hours to under 30 per week so as not comply with the federal ObamaCare mandate. Is moral blame to be placed squarely on the company or instead on the President? Union ABC has always supported Obama and his policies but why if in this case it will make the country's underemployment situation worse? Great free-market questions.
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IMO, the idea behind the healthcare act was to provide health insurance to most people.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that it patched the
existing free market system. The private sector's goal is always $$,
which, by definition, precludes offering service at a loss, or
even break-even. Employers were
bound to reduce or eliminate it as a benefit, as they have pensions
and other 'bennies', due to rising
costs. In any event, one of the factors driving costs is those without insurance; they are accepted and treated...and our
rates go up. Even doctors and hospitals are considering 'single payer', if to reduce horrendous
paperwork if nothing else.
Couple comments. First off it's endlessly fascinating to me that it's never Obama's fault. This didn't happen under any other president Democrat or Republican where some health care montstrosity was passed and companies felt the need to reduce part-timers' hours. What's doubly fascinating to me is how labor unions have always supported Obama and still support him even if his heavy-handed approach to health care drives businesses to take radical actions like gutting pter's hours. Talk about a disconnect!
ReplyDeleteI know liberals who say that forcing people to buy health insurance, aka the individual mandate is not the way to go. As for reducing bennies like pensions it's true if a company really faces hard times and goes through a bankruptcy they might stop the pension plan sometime in the future but even here the federal PBGC (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.) will step in to safeguard and guarantee the retirement incomes of most Americans. I personally know some part-timers who have recently had their hours drastically cut because of a company not willing to comply with the federal ObamaCare mandate and these same workers are saying to me how will they live and support their families? It's interesting that the ones I know who are complaining are less mad at the company and place more of the blame on Obama which is actually the subject of this thread - where do we place the moral blame if a company feels they have to resort to reducing the hours of their pt staff because of ObamaCare?
ReplyDelete'..This didn't happen under any other president Democrat or Republican..' It was directly modeled on Romneycare in Mass, which was supposed to be quite successful. Even Romney was proud of it, until, well...
ReplyDeleteMy first job in '66, health insurance was free, common back then for companies to pick up the entire tab; and granted, it was relatively cheap. My last job (and I wish there would have been a free market libertarian present)
times were tough. The CEO flew in on his $18 million company jet and
asked us if we would help save costs by bringing our own pens and pencils to work. He had a catered
luncheon and flew off on his $18 million jet. Real world-how it works.
An Obama/Romney administration would've been perfect then, Rom could give pointers when the thing don't go right which is often. Yeah I know the business model you're talking about, a company top-heavy with honchos who make it a point to visit every now and then with trivial complaints and suggestions. Many titles are kinda redundant and overlap and many times someone'll show up who you never saw before but maybe they're in charge of the olives or to see if you have all the food signs (in my case of course). A company could really save a whole hell of a lot of dough by getting rid of half the honchos and consolidating the rest of their duties and job titles and responsibilities and leaving the rest of us alone all day.
ReplyDeleteFolks should look a the bright side .
ReplyDeleteThat's all well and good BB but nearly everyone at work got their hours gutted because of ObamaCare and that's indefinite, hours never going up again for these people and many have families. Never happened under any other president Democrat or Republican as I've said.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I will say though, those workplaces which only provide full health insurance to only certain workers, probably full-timers but not to the rest of the staff most of whom are probably part-timers it should be all or nothing imo. Either they all get a health care package or none of them do. What the ones who make 40-45 hrs/wk are somehow more important? they need medicine and the rest don't? they get sick and the others never do?
ReplyDeletePeople that hate Obamacare should
ReplyDeletemove to a GOP state
where they aren't forced to live
long...or have a full set of teeth:
The TP verson of 'freedom of choice', ya know?
Whatever the pros and cons of ObamaCare BB the fact remains that more and more companies are cutting the hours of part-timers because of ObamaCare. Blame here who you want but again never happened in our history before where companies left and right are gutting part-timers' hours for the sole reason of who occupies the Oval Office. Oh sure cutting hours is nothing new but because of who the President is and his policies? that's new and unprecedented!
ReplyDeleteAw, the poor companies: the market
ReplyDeletehas gone from 6547 up to 14,865 under Obama. Yet, we note-
"Apple used technicalities in Irish and American tax law to pay little or no corporate taxes on at least $74 billion over the past four years, according to the Senate panel's findings". Corporations on sitting on trillions in cash. You know damn
well who is to blame....
But did Obama have to be so heavy-handed in his health care approach? I know liberals who are all for health care but feel he went about it the wrong way.
ReplyDeleteIMO, he was looking for some sort of bipartisan approach. So the legislation tilted to existing private sector healthcare. Also, IMO, the European single-payer is far more cost-effective, more efficient in service providing,
ReplyDeleteless paperwork and very well accepted in countries where it has existed for years. Impossible here..so what do you do, give up?
So you haven't heard of the British system with its infamous rationing, women with breast cancer waiting months for timely treatments?
ReplyDelete75% of British polled are completely satisfied with their healthcare. It probably isn't as
ReplyDeletegood as Sweden or Germany, but it is far better than US conservatives
think it is, you know the cherry picked propoganda
mills. No doubt the reverse works as well..staid Englishfolk horrified by the large number of
US citizens bankrupted by hospital care, even with health insurance.
Then, we have that oddity: Americans going to India, Singapore
South Korea, etc for major surgery-
while the wealthy of those countries come HERE for theirs.
IMHO the British are kinda stupid though, they also have no problem with subsidizing the Royal Family.
ReplyDeleteVirtually every other industrialized nation on the planet has a health system that gives better outcomes for less money than ours does, and virtually all of them are either single payer or single payer with the option to purchase additional private insurance if you want it. It's a better system. It works. But if for no other reason that that very reason (it's a better system and it works) conservatives will never let it be established here because we can NOT EVER admit as a nation that someone does something better than we do. How many people just throw out that line: we have the best healthcare in the world! And that is ever so much bullshit in every syllable. We have shit, shit, horrible healthcare. We have people bankrupted because of medical bills every day, people turned away, people who can't get preventative care, people who can't get their medicines. We have a society that doesn't care that these people die because of lack of healthcare, because the propaganda machine makes it all out that somehow it's these people's own fault that they don't have healthcare, they don't deserve it, they aren't worthy of it. And people die every day, and nobody cares.
ReplyDeleteAnd this Obamacare, they tout it as some kind of socialized medicine when what it actually did was open up huge markets for private effing companies, which is the furthest thing from socializing medicine you can possibly do, and they turn it into some kind of horrible thing, and people actually buy this and believe it, that a society in which we all have some kind of basic healthcare is evil.
I personally am working on some pneumonia and expect to have it in full force by next Friday.
".. they also have no problem with subsidizing the Royal Family."
ReplyDeleteKind of traditional going back to
9th Century. Lotta folks have no trouble subsidizing the Vatican,
ya know? But, stiff upper lip and
all that tommyrot, they can dig in.
Remember when they shot the Luftwaffe out of the skies?
But the difference between the Royals of Shakespeare's day and today's Royals is the Royals back in the day actually did something, actually ran countries and kingdoms. Now the Queen Mum's biggest dilemma everyday is finding a matching colored hat for her dress.
ReplyDelete