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Author Topic: Employer-provided insurance  (Read 831 times)
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Just Passion Through
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« on: September 25, 2013, 10:51:51 AM »

I was watching Ted Cruz's filibuster last night, and in the speech he brought up an interesting point: if you lose your job, you keep your life insurance, house insurance, car insurance, etc., and the only insurance you lose is your health insurance - which is arguably the worst form of insurance you can lose.

Why is the system set up this way, and how would the economy be affected if large employers were required to provide all forms of insurance?
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Lief 🗽
Lief
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« Reply #1 on: September 25, 2013, 12:01:53 PM »

Wait was Ted Cruz complaining about that? Because that's literally one of the main problems with the system that Obamacare is going to start to fix.
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Just Passion Through
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« Reply #2 on: September 25, 2013, 12:06:26 PM »

Wait was Ted Cruz complaining about that? Because that's literally one of the main problems with the system that Obamacare is going to start to fix.

I forget what aspect of Obamacare he was criticizing (because that argument, from my understanding, only further justifies HCR), but I think what he said raises a valid question: why are other insurance expenses not covered by employers?
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Lief 🗽
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« Reply #3 on: September 25, 2013, 01:01:55 PM »

It's an historical artifact that's become entrenched. During WW2 labor wanted raises (because the supply of workers was so low during the war), but wage controls prevented employers from giving raises, so the government allowed non-wage benefits (like health insurance) to be exempt from wage controls (and later exempt from payroll taxes, which is part of why this practice has continued). After the war, labor unions fought for employers to give their workers health benefits (and won), and soon this practice spread to non-unionized industries and sectors as well. And then with Medicare and medicaid, the government filled in the gaps, by giving unemployed people (olds and poors) health insurance. And despite liberal and union efforts since the 70s, no one has been able to pass single-payer universal health insurance so the system has unfortunately endured.
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barfbag
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« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2013, 12:06:49 AM »

I was watching Ted Cruz's filibuster last night, and in the speech he brought up an interesting point: if you lose your job, you keep your life insurance, house insurance, car insurance, etc., and the only insurance you lose is your health insurance - which is arguably the worst form of insurance you can lose.

Why is the system set up this way, and how would the economy be affected if large employers were required to provide all forms of insurance?

I'm not for it. There's plenty of other things we can do to compensate the unemployed. First we need to extend unemployment benefits from 39 to 59 weeks and even longer for those who lose their job due to globalization. Medicaid should be expanded to compensate those who have pre-existing conditions who can no longer be denied, but charged more. They could be compensated through Medicaid. If we allow people to purchase insurance across state lines and allow people to remain on their parents' insurance until age 23. What this country needs too is a child cancer database and a national diabetes coordinator. What else we should require is for insurance companies to equate both physical and mental health. There are a lot of people who are mentally ill who need to have health insurance too. As for employer provided insurance, a lot of places provide it. However, if an employer doesn't provide health insurance there should be a public option.
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King
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« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2013, 03:16:00 AM »

Wait was Ted Cruz complaining about that? Because that's literally one of the main problems with the system that Obamacare is going to start to fix.

The bill is too long for real American conservative Ted Cruz to read.
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« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2013, 10:12:34 AM »

Yeah it's rather odd for Cruz to be complaining about that. It's a stupid antiquated system, but the only way to get out of it would be either through Obamacare or going even further like single-payer.
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Redalgo
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« Reply #7 on: September 26, 2013, 01:49:43 PM »

Would it not make more sense to have some sort of social insurance, have people get insurance privately without their employer being at all involved, or combine the two a bit?
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barfbag
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« Reply #8 on: September 26, 2013, 09:37:27 PM »

Would it not make more sense to have some sort of social insurance, have people get insurance privately without their employer being at all involved, or combine the two a bit?

It's very expensive to buy your own insurance. We're talking $700 a month for some. I'd like to see Medicaid compensate those who have lower incomes whose employers don't provide health insurance. We could also expand Medicaid to cover those with pre-existing conditions who will no longer be denied but would have to pay higher rates. This should be done if we get rid of Obamacare especially.
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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #9 on: September 26, 2013, 09:45:38 PM »

Why is the system set up this way, and how would the economy be affected if large employers were required to provide all forms of insurance?

Lief did a good job of explaining why. As for what would happen if other forms of insurance were like health insurance...

Life/Disability: Not too much of an affect. There'd be some tragic cases of course, but the odds of a 30 year old, laid off worker dying or becoming unable to work are relatively low

Car: Potentially disastrous. Not quite as large a bill as a medical emergency, but much more frequent and just as devastating to a family's finances. you'd have a lot of bankruptcy cases where someone gets sued after injuring another person in an accident.

Home: Like life insurance, tragic if something happened during an unemployment spell, but relatively rare and wouldn't affect the economy much.
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Linus Van Pelt
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« Reply #10 on: September 26, 2013, 10:15:29 PM »

Health insurance makes sense to buy in groups, since the cost of a minority of individuals with illnesses that make them very high-risk to insure, through no fault of their own, can be spread around the whole group. That's why there's a certain logic to public health insurance even aside from considerations of economic redistribution, that appeals to conservatives in many non-US countries. And in the absence of a public system, a group of employees can form a somewhat co-ordinated group.

The same applies to life insurance and disability, which actually are often sponsored by employers.

The analogous considerations don't apply to car or home insurance. The differences in risk are smaller, and tend to be based on factors that involve more individual responsibility, like buying a large house or a fancy car, or getting in multiple at-fault accidents. So it's not so problematic to just let individuals buy it, and pay their own individually calculated premiums.
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greenforest32
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« Reply #11 on: September 27, 2013, 09:09:14 AM »

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/12/04/166434247/the-huge-and-rarely-discussed-health-insurance-tax-break
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barfbag
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« Reply #12 on: October 10, 2013, 02:28:13 PM »

Wait was Ted Cruz complaining about that? Because that's literally one of the main problems with the system that Obamacare is going to start to fix.

The bill is too long for real American conservative Ted Cruz to read.

How do we know Obama had so much free time on his hands that he was able to read 2,700 pages before signing it into law 14 short months after taking office?
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