From finance.yahoo.com
Part-Timers Losing Health Insurance May Want To Thank Their Companies
By Rick Newman | The Exchange
How terrible. Home Depot (HD) and Trader Joe’s have decided to stop offering health insurance for part-time employees, moving them over to Obamacare instead. More companies seem sure to follow. And more wailing about greedy, heartless corporations is sure to follow that. Some workers may start to drop dead from sheer anxiety before Obamacare even goes into effect on January 1.
Once the new health law has been in place for a few months, however, Part-Time America may issue a collective sigh of relief. Nobody ever held up today’s part-time "mini-med" plans as model coverage. The majority of part-time workers don’t even get health insurance, and those who do typically get diluted plans with limited benefits they still have to pay something for. “You have to question whether that’s really insurance,” says Paul Fronstin, director of the health research program at the Employee Benefits Research institute. “They may not cover prescription drugs, and if you get cancer or end up in the hospital, they probably won’t help you a whole lot.”
Insurance offered under the Affordable Care Act, by contrast, could end up being a much better deal. Obamacare is complicated, and it will require many people to do detailed research on their insurance options instead of having an employer do it for them. There have also been elaborate efforts by foes of the program to depict it as The Ruination of Everything. So it’s not surprising that part-timers being told their employer is cutting them loose and sending them over to Obamacare are a little jumpy.
Actually enrolling could calm them down, however. Obamacare was designed to make decent health insurance affordable for people who otherwise can’t afford it, and whether you love or hate the program, it seems likely to succeed at that basic mission. That’s because the program subsidizes the cost of insurance based on your income, with the largest subsidies going to those with the lowest incomes.
Read more from finance.yahoo.com >>
Part-Timers Losing Health Insurance May Want To Thank Their Companies
By Rick Newman | The Exchange
How terrible. Home Depot (HD) and Trader Joe’s have decided to stop offering health insurance for part-time employees, moving them over to Obamacare instead. More companies seem sure to follow. And more wailing about greedy, heartless corporations is sure to follow that. Some workers may start to drop dead from sheer anxiety before Obamacare even goes into effect on January 1.
Once the new health law has been in place for a few months, however, Part-Time America may issue a collective sigh of relief. Nobody ever held up today’s part-time "mini-med" plans as model coverage. The majority of part-time workers don’t even get health insurance, and those who do typically get diluted plans with limited benefits they still have to pay something for. “You have to question whether that’s really insurance,” says Paul Fronstin, director of the health research program at the Employee Benefits Research institute. “They may not cover prescription drugs, and if you get cancer or end up in the hospital, they probably won’t help you a whole lot.”
Insurance offered under the Affordable Care Act, by contrast, could end up being a much better deal. Obamacare is complicated, and it will require many people to do detailed research on their insurance options instead of having an employer do it for them. There have also been elaborate efforts by foes of the program to depict it as The Ruination of Everything. So it’s not surprising that part-timers being told their employer is cutting them loose and sending them over to Obamacare are a little jumpy.
Actually enrolling could calm them down, however. Obamacare was designed to make decent health insurance affordable for people who otherwise can’t afford it, and whether you love or hate the program, it seems likely to succeed at that basic mission. That’s because the program subsidizes the cost of insurance based on your income, with the largest subsidies going to those with the lowest incomes.
Read more from finance.yahoo.com >>
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