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The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

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Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

ScoobyDoo said:
If I lose money on my investment because of the criminal actions of others that's stealing. If I make money off of my investment without a criminal act that's investing.
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Those are "if" situations......another "if". you buy stock in RCA the day before audio tapes replace vinyl records; RCA stock declines because no one wants record players any more, now they all want tape players.

You do not see any "stealing" here, do you?

You buy stock in the typewriter repair business the day before word processors are unveiled, etc etc.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

FreshFish said:
Those are "if" situations......another "if". you buy stock in RCA the day before audio tapes replace vinyl records; RCA stock declines because no one wants record players any more, now they all want tape players.

You do not see any "stealing" here, do you?

You buy stock in the typewriter repair business the day before word processors are unveiled, etc etc.
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You don't really understand what the housing crash did, do you? I do. I didn't fall for the trap but it didn't matter. Everyone who owned a home, or had a retirement investment, or had/has a job got sucked into the vortex whether they wanted to be or not. It has nothing to do with CD's, or typewriters. Home ownership was considered the bedrock of American investment and society and the government and private sector in collusion destroyed it while the wealthy skimmed everything off the top before it went down.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

LynahFan said:
For the bazillionth time, it's not that the companies would WANT to "give" money to employees - they would have to increase wages to retain their employees. How much did employee out-of-pocket spending go up as a result of the 2000 tax cuts? How much would employee out-of-pocket spending go up if the company stopped paying for health care? And you're "unclear" on why this is any different? Better check your eyeglasses prescription.
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Color me confused. If we are is such a horrible economic state that we have huge unemployment that includes many very able people being out of work how is it that the companies have to do anything to retain their employees? They retain them because they have no where else to go at this moment. Even those who are very qualified are not eager to leave because there is no bidding war for their services. Maybe I am missing your point?
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

leswp1 said:
Color me confused. If we are is such a horrible economic state that we have huge unemployment that includes many very able people being out of work how is it that the companies have to do anything to retain their employees? They retain them because they have no where else to go at this moment. Even those who are very qualified are not eager to leave because there is no bidding war for their services. Maybe I am missing your point?
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You're 100% correct whether you're missing the point or not.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

leswp1 said:
Color me confused. If we are is such a horrible economic state that we have huge unemployment that includes many very able people being out of work how is it that the companies have to do anything to retain their employees? They retain them because they have no where else to go at this moment. Even those who are very qualified are not eager to leave because there is no bidding war for their services. Maybe I am missing your point?
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The question is what the companies WOULD have to do in the case where health insurance was no longer tied to employment - for example, if Congress made it illegal for insurance companies to offer group plans but left the mandate in place, so that everyone was required to purchase an individual plan on the open market. This would be an immediate windfall for employers, who would no longer have the expense of providing health insurance. My contention is that in this scenario, natural supply and demand would cause wages to reset over a period of time at a significantly higher level than they are today, so that overall profitability wouldn't really change all that much. Rover et. al. seem to believe that the companies would magically be able to circumvent the law of supply and demand and simply pocket all that extra money indefinitely.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

LynahFan said:
The question is what the companies WOULD have to do in the case where health insurance was no longer tied to employment - for example, if Congress made it illegal for insurance companies to offer group plans but left the mandate in place, so that everyone was required to purchase an individual plan on the open market. This would be an immediate windfall for employers, who would no longer have the expense of providing health insurance. My contention is that in this scenario, natural supply and demand would cause wages to reset over a period of time at a significantly higher level than they are today, so that overall profitability wouldn't really change all that much. Rover et. al. seem to believe that the companies would magically be able to circumvent the law of supply and demand and simply pocket all that extra money indefinitely.
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Let us know when the market changes. Until then your premise is textbook and not reality.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

LynahFan said:
The question is what the companies WOULD have to do in the case where health insurance was no longer tied to employment - for example, if Congress made it illegal for insurance companies to offer group plans but left the mandate in place, so that everyone was required to purchase an individual plan on the open market. This would be an immediate windfall for employers, who would no longer have the expense of providing health insurance. My contention is that in this scenario, natural supply and demand would cause wages to reset over a period of time at a significantly higher level than they are today, so that overall profitability wouldn't really change all that much. Rover et. al. seem to believe that the companies would magically be able to circumvent the law of supply and demand and simply pocket all that extra money indefinitely.
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Has there ever been an instance where the big companies voluntarily increased wages at the expense of profit? Right now there is no supply problem. That is why the worker benefits are decreasing everywhere. Mr Les carries our health insurance. Our expenses have gone up 500% (no, not exagerating). All over the expenses are going up and the employer contribution is going down. This is something everyone is wailing about on the news. No employer is eating the expense to keep workers that I know of. Whether they are carrying it or I have to doesn't make any difference. The $ are the same and supply demand hasn't made a bit of difference to anyone I know. Of course I am only one person.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

ScoobyDoo said:
You don't really understand what the housing crash did, do you? I do. I didn't fall for the trap but it didn't matter. Everyone who owned a home, or had a retirement investment, or had/has a job got sucked into the vortex whether they wanted to be or not. It has nothing to do with CD's, or typewriters. Home ownership was considered the bedrock of American investment and society and the government and private sector in collusion destroyed it while the wealthy skimmed everything off the top before it went down.
Click to expand...

You're starting to sound like a sieve that whines after a puck goes past him. If you don't pay attention in the game, you deserve to lose.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

I suspect wages would increase but not exactly commensurate with the loss of the monetary value of benefits. Figure the cost to my employer for my services, all things considered, is currently the sum S + H + O of my salary S, their share of my health care costs H, and other costs O that don't show up in my salary but aren't health insurance-related -- the cost of keeping the lights on in my office, for example.

Right now they pay me S. All other things being equal, if I suddenly assume all my health insurance costs they "should" pay me S + H, since my value to them hasn't changed. The reason I think they will wind up paying me somewhat less is that (1) psychological valuations of appropriate salary won't immediately jump the full H right away, and (2) I suspect my company makes back some of the H on the back end from tax adjustments (already borne by me, as a tax payer, and in effect a hidden benefit of the current system extended by me to my employer).

I think health insurance should be decoupled from employment for practical and humanitarian reasons, but I don't think it's overly pessimistic to think employers won't be able to pocket a considerable sum in the process that won't be remitted as salary adjustment, at least in the transitional period but I suspect permanently. I don't see it as likely that all employees will walk into their HR departments the morning of the switch and demand their salaries all go up by H or they strike. As always, the guy who is playing with money as an investment game has the big advantage over the rest of us who need to eat.
 
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Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

FreshFish said:
You can see stories like this once or twice a week for the past two years if you look.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/08/post_82.html

http://www.deborahshanetoolbox.com/millions-of-jobs-and-no-qualified-applicants-how-can-that-be/

http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/25178/Concerns-talent-shortage-manufacturing
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This makes me feel old. The cycle is the same. A dearth, a glut, a dearth added to a market that goes up and down. If beni's are tied to supply/ demand the only thing that holds them up is a good economy. If we rely on that to support it the cycle is about every 20 -30 yrs of having failure, rising to a ridiculous level where everyone is super confident and then pop goes the bubble.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

ScoobyDoo said:
So, the banks, lenders, and Wall Street accurately informed everyone of the risk in the housing market?
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Absolutely, and the buyers that were completely unaware of their situation fell into Sacred Heart's #19 from 2005-09. If you can't comprehend your own financial status, you're more than likely to make a sucker purchase.

I love these people that think it's Wall Street's fault that they are suckers...
 
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Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Well said Scooby, les, etc. What Lynah and some of the knucks' are saying sounds good in theory but won't happen in reality. That's the problem with almost all conservative thought (we'll be greeted as liberators, trickle down economics, etc). It might work in a think tank discussion but the world seldom works the way they expect it to.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

ScoobyDoo said:
Let us know when the market changes. Until then your premise is textbook and not reality.
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It's not my premise. I don't care to look back to see who it was, but some liberal-leaning poster hypothesized that if employers no longer paid health care benefits, then they would be able to pocket 100% of that expense as additional profit. I'm simply disagreeing with that position - I think a fair chunk (not 100%) of that would end up flowing to employees as higher wages.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

LynahFan said:
It's not my premise. I don't care to look back to see who it was, but some liberal-leaning poster hypothesized that if employers no longer paid health care benefits, then they would be able to pocket 100% of that expense as additional profit. I'm simply disagreeing with that position - I think a fair chunk (not 100%) of that would end up flowing to employees as higher wages.
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They'd certainly be able to do so. Would it benefit them in the long run? Well, if there's heavy competition for the person's services, I'd think not.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

LynahFan said:
It's not my premise. I don't care to look back to see who it was, but some liberal-leaning poster hypothesized that if employers no longer paid health care benefits, then they would be able to pocket 100% of that expense as additional profit. I'm simply disagreeing with that position - I think a fair chunk (not 100%) of that would end up flowing to employees as higher wages.
Click to expand...

It really depends on the competition of that job. For 80% of the jobs out there people can be easily replaced during times of 9% unemployment. That big chunk of jobs will see little to no wage increase.

For the jobs that are currently in demand and companies have to compete to fill, yeah they will see nice wage increases. But they are seeing them either way.

The only way we will see real wage increases is if the unemployment rate drops dramatically.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Kepler said:
I suspect wages would increase but not exactly commensurate with the loss of the monetary value of benefits. Figure the cost to my employer for my services, all things considered, is currently the sum S + H + O of my salary S, their share of my health care costs H, and other costs O that don't show up in my salary but aren't health insurance-related -- the cost of keeping the lights on in my office, for example.

Right now they pay me S. All other things being equal, if I suddenly assume all my health insurance costs they "should" pay me S + H, since my value to them hasn't changed. The reason I think they will wind up paying me somewhat less is that (1) psychological valuations of appropriate salary won't immediately jump the full H right away, and (2) I suspect my company makes back some of the H on the back end from tax adjustments (already borne by me, as a tax payer, and in effect a hidden benefit of the current system extended by me to my employer).

I think health insurance should be decoupled from employment for practical and humanitarian reasons, but I don't think it's overly pessimistic to think employers won't be able to pocket a considerable sum in the process that won't be remitted as salary adjustment, at least in the transitional period but I suspect permanently. I don't see it as likely that all employees will walk into their HR departments the morning of the switch and demand their salaries all go up by H or they strike. As always, the guy who is playing with money as an investment game has the big advantage over the rest of us who need to eat.
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Considering that H is a blended rate across all employees, it also would not be feasible to break out H for each individual person. Your analysis at least has some reasoning behind it.

Also, I don't think people like LynahFan have been saying that it is a deliberate process, in which employees go into HR and "demand" a raise. Their arguments are more along the lines of "if an employer has more cash flow available than before, and if an employer has a need to attract or retain key people, then wages [only for] those key people will be bid up until the after-tax cost of employee wages + benefits will be about the same after as they were before." That is a reasonable viewpoint, especially as hiring managers already look at the total incremental cost of a potential new hire. Any competitive hiring (or retention) process uses the value of the entire benefit package as a selling point; for skilled positions, no one recruits, and no one accepts, based solely on salary anyway.

Some respondants to that argument have ignored the nuance by ridiculing the notion that wages would go up across the board, which no one actually did say.
 
Re: The Sad Case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

leswp1 said:
Has there ever been an instance where the big companies voluntarily increased wages at the expense of profit? Right now there is no supply problem. That is why the worker benefits are decreasing everywhere. Mr Les carries our health insurance. Our expenses have gone up 500% (no, not exagerating). All over the expenses are going up and the employer contribution is going down. This is something everyone is wailing about on the news. No employer is eating the expense to keep workers that I know of. Whether they are carrying it or I have to doesn't make any difference. The $ are the same and supply demand hasn't made a bit of difference to anyone I know. Of course I am only one person.
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Identical experience here, albeit, small / privately owned business...with a few years of 100% of increases passed to employees sprinkled in. With health care benefits simultaneously going south. In my industry this has been the norm among the industry related small companies, for many years actually. Some exception for unionized employees, per employer contribution aspect.
 
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