First, companies like Verizon announced that they were exploring ways to opt out of health care, pay the fine, and let their employees seek coverage under the state plans.
In the Dallas Morning News they state:
As companies crunch numbers on what the new law means for their bottom line, some have concluded they might be financially better off canceling their health care coverage and moving their workers to government-subsidized "exchanges" that will be created in four years.
In the case of Dallas-based AT&T Inc., the move could mean saving billions of dollars per year, according to internal documents that came to light this week.
The documents were part of a portfolio submitted to a House subcommittee looking into financial charges companies took in relation to another aspect of the new law.
The documents, obtained by Fortune magazine and posted online this week, reveal that four companies – AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc., Caterpillar Inc. and Deere & Co. – had investigated to varying degrees the impact of dropping health care coverage and pushing their workers onto the new exchanges, where they will be able to buy their own insurance.
Second, states can opt out of providing the pool for a plan and let the Feds take control.The Hill printed an interesting article today which tells what may very well happen over the next few years. Under the new Health Care Plan the states may opt out of running the health care pool.
As the Hill reports:
The insurance exchanges to cover millions of people are scheduled to be up and running in 2014, but states must decide as early as 2012 whether to operate them or have the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) take over, similarly to what happened with the high-risk pools for sick people who can’t find affordable coverage. That latter decision has attracted charges of partisan politics. With only three exceptions, the 19 states that have declined to run their own show are run by Republican governors...
Edmund Haislmaier, a senior research fellow for health policy studies with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said some Republican states may decide to gamble that health reform will eventually “blow up, get repealed, or both.”...Some may decide, “I‘m just going to do nothing – it’s [HHS’ mess], let them deal with it.”
The states that have opted to let HHS run a high-risk pool for them are: Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming. Only three – Delaware, Tennessee and Wyoming – are led by Democrats. Utah and Rhode Island will make their final determinations later...Governors who let HHS administer the program have justified their decisions by claiming the $5 billion set aside by the health reform law will run out before the program expires in 2014, at which point insurance market reforms will make high-risk pools unnecessary. That could have left them having to foot the bill for several years.
So what this seems to be is that the large companies at first and then the rest will just walk away from health care, the states will walk away, and the Feds will take over! This begins to look an awful lot like a single payer Government run system.
Wait till that GS 9 tells you that you cannot have that tumor removed...an yes, she has no idea what a tumor is in the first place...you will then really love the Motor Vehicle Office!
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