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8 Roads to Universal: [Democratic Health Care Plans]
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They still have the same wage and the same health insurance, assuming medicare is the same or better. What have they lost? They feel like dummies for voting for benefits over wages, so they lost their *pride* I guess. But they didn't lose anything material, and the union now has a good case for demanding more money.
When I bought my previous computer I made sure it had a good DVD drive in it, because it was important at the time. But then I basically never used it because streaming and downloads became the way software was distributed. I wasted my money on that DVD drive. That made me feel foolish. But it didn't make the computer worse by being in it. It could download software just fine, as good as any computer without a DVD drive.
They did lose something material. Their benefits. The things they negotiated for as compensation. I don't know why you keep pretending like benefits aren't actual real tangible compensation. Unions negotiate for them as such all the fucking time. Extremely explicitly.
Why would it be worse for families and the ill? I'm just saying that as someone who isn't taking advantage of a Cadillac plan that must familes and ill people don't have access to anyway, I'd be fine if personally I ended up with relatively less healthcare if it meant that everyone else was covered and that I wasn't tied to my employer.
I think that this will either be the most litigated issue of the primaries or each candidate will have their own approach and will be chosen on some other issue and the healthcare will be part of the package deal.
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Benefits that they'd still have, just from the public healthcare plan or a mix of that and supplemental insurance that employers are still free to offer.
I'm not seeing any way in which moving health coverage from something I have to negotiate to get from a boss to something that I always have from my government as anything but a positive.
The bus becomes free.
Mother fucker, the state just screwed me out of $400/month!
This argument is the same as saying that because the fed increased the corporate tax rate and gave me a thousand dollars in tax credits, it's fine to reduce my pay by a thousand bucks because I break even.
It's clearly not fine! government largesse doesn't counteract the loss in compensation.
yes, exactly. You're joking but if they didn't put a plan in place to expect your employer to give you the $400, you have been screwed out of it.
Ah, I understand, you're specifically taking about cases in which health coverage were negotiated at the expense of wages or other compensation.
Sorry, that's an oversight on my part.
So you're saying, hypothetically, that if the change happened one night by Genie and you never knew the difference (except your copay was gone), you'd feel like you lost something?
Your life would be measurably worse by some real metric?
nod nod
the thing is, all employer contributions to a healthcare plan are benefits negotiated at the expense of wages or other compensation.
You know what? Me too.
Every contract my union negotiated for the last seventy or so years has involved health insurance as part of the compensation when the city and government signed the deal.
But 1.) That didn't stop the state from slashing our compensation by 20% a few years ago, when they had no hand in compensating us or negotiating the contract - a move small c conservatives still applaud and recommend taking g further
And 2.) Despite the fact that we are still negotiating healthcare as part of compensation going to single payer or near hybrid system is still the moral/ethical and most importantly smart thing to do
What you would stand to lose pales in comparison to what you stand to gain as the rank and file shmuck we both are.
And it isn't something we're stealing either, our employers simply do not deserve the right to hold our wellbeing hostage - how much of that power we take back is open to debate but looking at this current system as somehow beneficial to you is a chump move.
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Even unions can barely scrape up things like COLAs given the state of the labour market, so I don't expect "Give me a huge raise now that you aren't paying me my healthcare" to function even for them, let alone the non-unionised worker.
I've seen medicare, even the cadillac gold plans barely come close to fucking touching it unless you're a fucking senator. I will take losing the 3k my boss pays into a shitty HDHP/HSA every month that has a 10k deductible thanks.
It's still a net win across the board. Is there any reason such legislation couldn't provide that employers must convert previous insurance contributions directly to wages?
Spool, what sort of compensation do you think would be fair, and what do you think is possible given the bureaucratic realities involved in calculating 'wage increases negotiated away as opportunity cost for marginal gains in health coverage'?
Me either... I mean, the reality is that we're probably going to just have to write that off but it sucks super hard to just walk away from thousands in compensation. Sure, health insurance stays basically the same as now but I'll just work for less.
Middle class families with employer insurance are going to see an effective 8-10% pay cut if nothing's done about it.
I think a pure "look at 201x, take your employer contribution per enrolled FTE, and give them an equivalent pay increase" is perfectly reasonable and ought to be included. I'd go further and exempt that increase from payroll taxes, as otherwise employers are going to be losing the tax benefit of their contributions + also seeing an increase in their tax burden from payroll increases + ALSO seeing an increase just to pay for M4A.
Right. The relative loss will eventually be compensated by the exclusion of needing to argue with your boss about how healthy you should be.
I have no doubt the immediate result is a lower increase in pay than the employer originally paid. But the level of health care you receive should generally remain the same. And non-monetary benefits like health care are not directly comparable to their stated cost. I don't value my health as worth about half a car, so I don't really care whether I "lose money" in the trade. I don't think my very health is fungible.
I'd say workers who prioritized benefits over wages will have a very good case asking for the compensation to be rolled into their salary since a lot of companies that do benefits over wages make it a huge deal and draw attention to it in their hiring packages. The ones where it's sort of an afterthought (most people) or they don't get hardly anything (minimum wage that doesn't qualify because they're kept under the minimum) gain a bit in this situation.
To be honest, it's going to make moving jobs a lot easier now since you don't have to deal with cobra and all that dumb shit too. And people who are working low wage jobs will have a lot more upward mobility since that isn't a thing they need to focus on anymore. It's a good thing even if some of us lose a bit in our total compensation packages.
-the job market, eventually, would mean that wages would increase here or at another company
-I'm still saving my co-pays, deductibles, and premiums
-I no longer have to mess with HSAs, FSAs, or any other borderline-scam tax-advantaged bureaucratic bullshit
And of course, the big one, I'm no longer beholden to my employer for health coverage.
I think this is a weird hill to die on.
Compensation is all the things your employer gives you in trade for your work. If they give you a basket of fish, two $20 bills, and a ride home, and then they stop giving you the ride home you have lost compensation.
All that stuff can be directly mapped to a dollar value, and I feel like it's entirely reasonable to express your loss of compensation as one of direct financial loss. If You're paying me 3k/mo and also contributing $300/mo to my healthcare premium, and then you stop making that contribution, I've lost $300 in compensation.
Whether I also get to still go to the doctor is orthogonal. I've lost $3600/year from my employment package!
idk man, at my last employer, this change would have caused me to lose $14,400 per year in compensation. That's an enormous hit to take! I don't feel like it's weird to want a prospective M4A plan to take into account that kind of a loss.
Yeah, but in what sense? Why do you want dollars?
If your compensation was reduced to $1 but all your bills were paid as part of the DopeShit4Spool program, you had the same amount of spending power, and on top of that you got a new house and luxury car, would you still be mad at your lost salary because the number went down? Because something that was described as your special thing is now available to everyone?
New job has a very sparkly $500 deductible, max $1000 for family, 80/20 to a measly 4K then 100% paid, excellent copays, good drug benefit. Very large pile of cash out of my pocket every month.
But I'm not talking about a net gain here. This isn't some three-handed trade where it's supposed to all even out and we're cool.
My contract with my employer includes compensation of various types. If one of those types is no longer a thing, and I don't get the compensation some other way, I have lost money.
My government offers me various benefits. If I get a new benefit that makes my life easier, yay me!
These two things are completely unrelated.
It doesn’t really feel like the government’s job to take an individual’s compensation package into consideration when marking a net improvement for its populace. It can’t take every individual situation into account. It’d be unreasonable to, and a hinderance when working towards a positive objective.
The government makes it so you are losing insurance through your employer, but ensures that you are still getting coverage at no additional cost to you. That should be a wash in their eyes. Any lost compensation as a result is between you and your employer (or next employer if they don’t adjust). Most people don’t even get a say in how their coverage affects their compensation package. At my last workplace it came with our annual benefit elections, “here is how much you are paying per paycheck, have a nice day”.
Except instead of just you and your coworkers it's literally every American. The only thing that probably changes in this situation is your employer doesn't pay into a special plan just for you and them. Maybe even it just gets rolled into a federal one as part of an employers payroll taxes instead of being something they are required by law to provide and get to deduct on their taxes.
The change is, for all intents and purpose, zero.
I know what you're saying, you want the cash because you think it's some magical thing, but really it's just being shifted to a different calculus for "benefits" right there next to SSI and disability insurance on your tax returns.
The only people who take advantage generally have coverage through a spouse or domestic partner or have an opportunity to get healthcare at a compensated rate (military, disability, other job)
So it's not a huge stretch to say we already have plans for compensation for people who companies don't provide health benefits. Not that I think it works out as a fair exchange. 3$/hr is a pretty good deal to not pay 1500$+ a month for an employee health plan.
Disconnecting healthcare from compensation would be great, but the system has deep and tangled roots. Without a competitive alternative that employers AND employees want to buy in to via taxes, it will leave someone (the worker) totally screwed.
I mean, maybe? I walk to work so the car means fuck all to me, and a luxury house is just extra work + lack of mobility for a couple in their 40s with no kids at home.
All joking aside, yeah it's materially different for my job to pay me in currency and for the government to give me services. The decision-making power of currency is often better, and we can see that in the success of welfare programs that give cash vs ones that give stuff.
Broadly, "what if we took all your money but gave you everything you wanted" is a sucker's deal. The middle ground where you take some of the money and do stuff that might or might not help at varying levels of tangibility (if that's a word), and leave me the rest to solve my own problems, is more effective (not to mention more free-as-in-crying-eagle).
The dollar value is not my value, and how I value things can not be mapped to their dollar value.
Do you think 200 dollars in health care insurance (not insurance of 200 dollars, in) is equivalent to 200 dollars in rent? Or 200 dollars in take out? Or the 200 dollars a set of one brand of clothes costs more than another?
So, government just doubled the standard deduction, reducing your tax burden. Cool with you if your employer cuts your salary by an equal amount?
money is fungible, so yes. If you were my boss and you gave me $200 in healthcare and also paid $200 of my rent and also spent $200 a month on free food and bought me $200 in work clothes, and then you stopped doing any of those things, I'm out $200 in compensation.
Except that's not at all how that just worked. You didn't lose anything in that transaction your employer just doesn't pay for your benefits directly by negotiating with an insurance company. That's it. That's all that would change (unless they don't absorb those costs which doesn't seem likely). It just changed hands from BCBS to Medicare.
Yeah but it's not stopping, it's shifting to a different thing.
You don't lose your vacation hours if they move to a different leave system and all your hours transfer (a tangible benefit where you get paid for not working).
I am doing my best to wrap my brain around this. I have VA coverage and 100% monthly premium coverage for Aetna and I would drop the Aetna in a heartbeat for UHC, because it means all the people not in my position, like my neice and nephews, can suddenly afford healthcare coverage.
You don't lose anything at all and other people gain the right to life.
I do not understand at all.
Your argument basically is the same as someone complaining that their home lost value after they purchased it.
It doesn't matter why it happened, just that it happened to you.
And it doesn't matter that it will regain that value and more eventually, because you want to sell now.
And like in that case, I'm sorry you're having a feel bad about it, but people in your position will claw that money back over time or at least the difference in what your employer will now be paying in taxes vs what they were paying in their share of premiums.
Because negotiations to fill vacancies are going to start involving the new math.
And if people are doing your job for better pay, you're going to apply somewhere else and get the same out of them.
Unless this whole free market thing is a farce.
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he's not he's saying he's entitled to the money they'd pay to something like BCBS on behalf of him because it's a "benefit" and since everyone gets health insurance via the feds he's earned it since not everyone works for his employer.
I mean in some ways he's right, he should be able to recapture some of that money. But fighting against this reasonably great thing because you don't benefit quite as much as someone who is poorer than you is incredibly shitty. He's already getting a better deal by not having to worry about medical coverage via his employer and worry about what switching a job might entail, that's a net gain right there over the incredibly large net gains of his health insurance vs medicare.
There’s always going on strike until the compensation is restored
Edit: which, if your medical needs are now covered by UHC, gives you a stronger bargaining position than when your employer controls both liquid compensation and your health benefits
Why push that rock up the hill?
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