Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

What’s all this fighting about?, Pt.5 – Ugly Math, or just abstract?

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Also, there is the risk of these victimized employers turning around and ‘slashing’ paychecks to “compensate for higher health insurance premiums. In the case of the $171,428.57 employee, he stands to lose a lot. At $12,000 for his family health insurance premiums he could find himself with only $159,428.57 to live on for the entire year. The lucky ones, of course are on the bottom. Those earning minimum wage get a ‘free ride’ because their wages can’t be slashed and they still can get health insurance.

Now comes the time for some advanced arithmetic. Two highly educated individuals have put together some figures that seem startling extreme. One is from the Harvard School of Public Health, named Katherine Baicker. The other is with the University of Michigan named Helen Levy. According to their calculations, with a health insurance/care system styled after the Massachusetts Model (which Mr. O draws heavily from) and extended to a national level, a quarter-million poor people will lose their jobs (health insurance, too?). The poor will be the hardest hit. And after the millions of jobs the Bush administration have already assisted in leaving the country, even a quarter-million jobs is a significant portion of the greatly-reduced job-pie.

Not being privy to the calculations, we must draw from the few inferences we are given. We are given that $12,000 is 4% of $300,000, which is no big deal. We are also given that $12,000 is 50% of $24,000. Ok, so far. What does this mean? Is the inference that every employer will have to pay the National Health Insurance Exchange $12,000 for every employee?

Continued…