Here's a news flash that you won't see in the legacy media: he lied.
Someone inside AT&T leaked an internal Powerpoint presentation that measured the financial impact of DemCare.
AT&T estimates that it can save upwards of $4 billion annually by dropping health care coverage and paying the penalty tax instead.
They'd be foolish to keep their health care benefits and, in fact, shareholders should demand the company capture that income and return it in the form of increased dividends and R&D.Like the Soviet central planners of a bygone era, today's Democrats are marching us into an abyss of unintended consequences for our entire health care system. They're pushing us, shoving us, against our will, over a cliff of fiscal irresponsibility. They're killing a legacy of prosperity that we could otherwise bequeath to subsequent generations.
The modern, hard left Democrat Party leadership is intentionally trying to destroy the Republic: open borders, votes for felons, statehood for Puerto Rico -- using any and all means to gain the votes necessary to stay in power, no matter how catastrophic the effects are on the country.
As someone told me a while back: it's November or never.
Hat tip: William Teach.
Boy, that's a tough call....
ReplyDeleteYour reasoning is totally spurious. AT&T could save $4.6 billion a year by dropping health coverage right now. That is more than it will be able to save under Obamacare. AT&T could save even more money by paying everyone minimum wage. It does not do either of these because of competitive factors and union contracts.
ReplyDeleteYo, Iggie:
ReplyDeleteAT&T can rightfully say to shareholders that employees are covered under the new DemCare takeover. So no one loses their health insurance.
That would not have been the case before DemCare.
Get it? It's really not that complicated.
But, directorblue, employees would then have to pay the premiums for Obamacare and would not want to do so, anymore than they would want to pay for health insurance on their own now. It's not a question of what AT&T can tell its shareholders; it's a question of what the employment market demands. Right now, AT&T could theoretically make employees pay nearly all the cost of group health insurance. Why don't they do that? Why doesn't AT&T pay everyone mnimum wage?
ReplyDeleteWhy do you continue to conflate salary with benefits? Minimum wage has nothing to do with this discussion.
ReplyDeleteAT&T can truthfully proclaim to its shareholders that because government has guaranteed that all citizens can acquire health care "inexpensively" without having to worry about "pre-existing conditions", it has decided to drop the employee health benefit -- along with thousands of other companies who will make the same decision.
"Why do you continue to conflate salary with benefits?"
ReplyDeleteEr, benefits ARE salary.
Jeebus, this is a dumb thread.
Mike C. from GCP.
There is no basis for your assumption that Obamacare will be "inexpensive." To the contrary, the experiences of Massachusetts and New York with a similar system, and the low penalties for failing to procure individual insurance, lead to the conclusion that the premiums for Obamacare will be quite high because of adverse self-selection (meaning that only those who are very ill will buy insurance, driving up its average cost). Furthermore, any potential employee who is even semi-intelligent would look at the entire compensation package, not just taxable wages. In fact, unions sacrifice some wages for health insurance coverage, because the latter is untaxed income.
ReplyDeleteSay, let's alert HR departments the world over: benefits are salary!
ReplyDeleteI think you mean compensation, at least here in the U.S. Comp includes:
wages (salary and bonus)
retirement benefits
health benefits
employee assistance programs
deferred compensation
etc.
Let's get this straight; health care insurance (a benefit) is offered to management of AT&T as a hiring incentive. With hourly employees, most of whom are CWA union members, it is a negotiated benefit in leiu of wages.
ReplyDeleteAT&T estimates that the cost of insuring just the employee (not dependents) is $10,083/yr. Now, multiply that by the employee, a spouse and two children.
Compare that to the estimated $2,000/yr fine that will be imposed on AT&T if they end company sponsored health insurance. And remember, there is no requirement for the companies to pay a fine for not insuring spouses or dependent children. The fine is just for employees.
How much does AT&T, Verizon and other companies save in the course of just one year? BILLIONS.
The CWA contract with AT&T ends in 2014, the very year that most of these government mandated insurance requirements go into effect.
First thing to end will be all retiree benefits. And due to AT&T's retirement requirements, there are thousands of AT&T retirees in their early 50's. Perscription benefits, a savings to AT&T retirees, will probably end in January, 2012. That will be the first step of many, which will eventually have retirees see an end to their health care benefits, and they will be too young to go on Medicare.
The CWA (as a 32 year member, I call them the Crap Wealsels of America) screwed their membership when they urged members to call their congress critters to push for Obamacare. What those idiots who run the CWA never realized is that their insurance was not going to be covered under the "union" exemption because CWA members get their health insurance from company sponsored programs, not from union sponsored programs like the Teamsters.
I hope every damn CWA member who voted for Obama now understand that the "change" they voted for just cost their their free health care insurance.
I predict that Obama's health care system for all this new course to your face.Of wont blow it big-time president is now going to come along and go away and be able to hide from it all I will be going. They trillions in tax revenues over the next couple of years before the really out anything.At will collect over the same time to pay premiums with insurance companies with high heavens, that he is building an addition to all the extra money something. The health care to talk a big cluster fuck going to be. Than all of its employees on health care will likely be able to drop more companies. I just wonder how that will work with central staff. And the state association, is not there.
ReplyDeleteusb flash drive
Read the inscription on the picture of the tombstone. Wow, if that isn't worth a thousand words I don't know what is! That tombstone sure does look old. HMMM. Click on the picture & you can see the front of the tombstone. N. Grigsby, died 1890. HMMM, 1890. He probably fought in the Civil War. Wait a minute, in the 1800s, the Republican party were the Liberals & Democratic Party were the Conservatives. HMMM. Well, THAT certainly does paint a different picture. Check your history Doug Ross. Looks like old Mr. N. Grigsby wanted to make his dying protest against the ideas & policie of 1800s which were, in fact, the policies of today's modern GOP.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that if AT&T elects to abandon employee healthcare as a form of compensation they do so of their own volition. Are they not responsible for their decisions and actions? Whether an employee can seek healthcare outside the company is irrelevant. Some of you seem wholly unaware that the vast majority of companies have been hacking away at retiree benefits for many years, long before the AHCA. And will continue to do so! The AHCA is a response to this ongoing problem, not the cause, no matter how you choose to spin it for political purposes.
ReplyDelete