When You Can’t Actually Keep Your Health Care Plan

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President Obama has said that his health care law largely doesn’t impact anyone who already has coverage. Tell that to all the people who are being dropped from their health plans.

UPS made a news splash yesterday when it announced it is dropping coverage for spouses of employees if they are offered coverage through their own employers. The delivery company expects to remove 15,000 working spouses from its health coverage next year, saving the company about $60 million a year.

And UPS isn’t the only one. Dropping spousal coverage has become a trend among employers due to continually rising health care costs. Obamacare’s wide variety of benefit and coverage mandates combined with new fees, taxes, and penalties of course all increase the cost of coverage, intensifying the trend. The University of Virginia made a similar announcement yesterday.

According to a new survey by consultants Towers Watson, in 2013, 4 percent of surveyed employers excluded working spouses from coverage and another 8 percent plan to do so in 2014.

There’s no ambiguity here. UPS was clear that Obamacare played a large role in its decision to change its plan structure:

“[T]he ACA has mandated several changes that have been impacting the cost of coverage for UPS employees since its implementation. These include:

  • Coverage for dependent children up to age 26; regardless of whether they are enrolled in school, are married, or (beginning 2014) have coverage available from their own employer;
  • Removal of lifetime and annual benefit limits;
  • Fees for comparative effectiveness research; and
  • Fees to help fund the public exchanges.

We are making these changes to, in part, offset cost increases due to the ACA and so that healthcare premiums remain the same for most of our people.” (Page 18 of the memo).

And many more changes to employer-sponsored insurance are likely to come in the near future. According to the Towers Watson survey, when asked how they thought plans would change by 2018—the year that Obamacare’s “Cadillac” tax on high-cost plans takes effect—92 percent of employers said plans would be different, with 47 percent saying they anticipated significant or transformative change.

Do you like your health care plan? Sorry. With Obamacare in effect, costs are going up and plans are changing. If lawmakers would defund this unworkable law, we could focus on health care reform that puts people in charge of the type of health coverage they want.

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Comments

comments

8 COMMENTS

  3. As UPS drops working Spouses on health plans. Then so too, Insurance Companies should not be asking which Health Insurance is Primary! This is done for the sole purpose of lowering cost to the company when medical claims come in. In addition, Unions should consider this event when negotiating with employers. Take the Stevedores Union that literally control our Shipping Ports in Hawaii. If they strike, the whole in/exports stop. Hawaii becomes a hostage to this strike. This has happened many times in the pass when the Stevedores Union begin new contract talks for
    higher wages and benefits with Matson, Young Brothers, etc.. Everyone pays, and its time our Companies realize
    making huge profits are no longer possible today, and start making their investors realize this?

  4. And you…Hawaii, just had to have Obama. No grumbling, you got what you asked for. Aren't you glad you kept the haole mormom out of office. BTW Thank you to the 30% who see Obama for what he is….

  5. Several people are suffering from low health insurance coverage plan just because of low effective health care reform programs; previously we have found similar views in regarding Obamacare therefore in most of occasion we have found several controversies in terms of getting beneficial health insurance coverage under Obamacare heath care reform programs. https://about.me/urgentcareguru

  6. A health care plan can be regarded from different points of view. A healthy care plan can resume into a to-do list that you carry everywhere with you, take natural supplements and ensure your daily energy boost, you rest well with Asphalia and eat according to healthy diets. A health care plan can be also regarded from a financial point of view, if you sign for a policy that will cover for you no matter what.

  7. All in all, each of us should take care of himself or herself because we're the only ones that really care about ourselves… don't rely on anything or anyone else, just yourself

  8. I know Obamacare is one of the most controversial things he's done, but doesn't anybody see the ood parts of it too?

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