More companies dropping health coverage, thanks to Obamacare
Back in 2011, I argued that Obamacare would lead employers to drop existing health insurance coverage and throw employees onto the mercies of the exchanges. (See this post and links therein.) Liberals, including no less than Paul Krugman, denied this. But it’s looking like it’s happening. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart, that paragon of the modern employer, is dropping coverage for 30,000 part-time employees. It joins Target, Home Depot, and UPS, who’ve already cut coverage. And, at the high end, the so-called “Cadillac tax” on generous insurance plans is also leading to… Read More
Bye-bye employer health insurance
McKinsey is out with the results of a survey of 1,300 employers (How US health care reform will affect employee benefits), and the lead finding is a shocker: a third or more are likely to drop health insurance coverage for their workers as Obamacare takes effect. Clearly, not all bosses fully understand the economics of the new health insurance universe. Right now, 30% of respondents to McKinsey’s survey “will definitely or probably stop offering ESI in the years after 2014”—but 50% of those with “high awareness of reform” will do so. (The… Read More
David Brooks can’t add
Fact-checking David Brooks could be a full-time job. Just yesterday, he wrote this about the federal budget problem: Raising taxes on the rich will not do it. There aren’t enough rich people to generate the tens of trillions of dollars required to pay for Medicare, let alone all the other programs. Almost every word of this is wrong. Medicare doesn’t require “tens of trillions,” unless your budget horizon is something like twenty years. This year, Medicare will cost $572 billion. In 2020, according to the CBO, it will cost $949 billion. Over the… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 