Challenge

[MCI transplant]

Would be nice to know details as to how ObamaCare might effect the needs pertaining health insurance for future retired individuals. We know legislation was passed, we legislation might still be repealed. But it would still be nice to be informed.

<_< -------- Informer, if you are counting on "Obama Care" for their future healthcare needs, sadly, you are in deep due due!!!

 

[Bagbelt]

<_< -------- Informer, if you are counting on "Obama Care" for their future healthcare needs, sadly, you are in deep due due!!!

If it ends up being like Mass. health then it would be pretty much the individual buying insurance on a private exchange being pooled with others. Would a VEBA cover this? I think the 5.5% offer on a 401k is substandard. I've been with companies that raised the rate with seniority up to 10-12% surely giving up a pension plan is worth more than a couple of bucks an hour to get a 5.5% match on less than $10 an hour for most non maintenance jobs.

 

[TWU informer]

<_< -------- Informer, if you are counting on "Obama Care" for their future healthcare needs, sadly, you are in deep due due!!!

If it ends up being like Mass. health then it would be pretty much the individual buying insurance on a private exchange being pooled with others. Would a VEBA cover this? I think the 5.5% offer on a 401k is substandard. I've been with companies that raised the rate with seniority up to 10-12% surely giving up a pension plan is worth more than a couple of bucks an hour to get a 5.5% match on less than $10 an hour for most non maintenance jobs.

Do either one of you have facts as to what the National Health Care legislation really means? Or are these typical emotional outburst that are driven by Political preferences? I am "counting" on "nothing" for anybody, just simply desire honest facts.

I guess what I meant to say is "A real Union would be offering details on this information, instead of just stealing dues money to hand off to political candidates in exchange for access". It is very possible that this legislation has a huge impact on our retirement medical future. Does the blind leading the leading the blind sound about right here?

 

[The Goose]

... snip
Does the blind leading the leading the blind sound about right here?

No - much more like two monkeys attempt to pork the same football.

Get a visual ...

 

[Bagbelt]

No need for insults. I was attempting to pose a valid question. The new federal legislation is largely based on Romneycare which is a public insurance exchange with private companies bidding on polices beginning in 2013. The original plan was a medicare buy in at 50, but that was scratched. If a VEBA trust is being set up, would it not be able to make up the difference between sick time and paying 25% of the premium? All this self reliance talk brings a tear to my eye, but with a weekend in a hospital going for $30,000- good luck Davy Crockett..

 

[Bagbelt]

What I meant to say is that if you have insurance already it is pretty much status quo, the new law is basically for individuals and small businesses who cannot buy insurance through a pool.

 

[TWU informer]

What I meant to say is that if you have insurance already it is pretty much status quo, the new law is basically for individuals and small businesses who cannot buy insurance through a pool.

And my point is what "pool" does the 44 and under buy retirement insurance? Wouldn't a 44 year old that needs to retire and has no option via TWU/AA qualify? You see I am not really looking for sound bites or comparisons to Romney Care I am looking for detailed specifics they we are not going to get from Fox News, or the Donkey Network.

I am saying why doesn't TWU hire and get a comprehensive detailed explanation that might help members in the future.

Or do you already have inside data that under NO circumstances will a TWU member ever qualify for Obama Care?

 

[eolesen]

Dave, I don't know that too many people really know the full impact. Hell, half the Senators and Representatives who voted on it had no idea what they were actually voting on -- they just followed the instructions from Barry, Nancy & Harry....

My company has been acting as though nothing has or will happen. I suspect a lot of other employers are taking a similar status quo view for planning 2011 benefits.

 

[frontline]

Is this proposed TA any more of a profession killer than massive outsourcing of maintenance to other countries? Is it any worse than seeing AA go into bankruptcy and shrink to a point of no recovery because it has to compete against mega-airlines like the new UA and DL?

That ship has sailed for most of our industry. In many ways we are the only ones left. I understand the desire to fight it but it seems like the tide is already on the way out.

 

[TWU informer]

I still say the profession killers were 1000+ A&P Scabs at NWA Airlines.

Overhaul and Line are obviously in two different boats when it comes to a fight.

I will admit that watching 1000 plus scabs show up at NWA changed my perspective about this profession and the belief that we are unreplaceable. That thought process will never change for me. I watched as the NWA AMT was pumped full of ideas that sounded good when talked about, but when test came the Scabs proved many of those ideas to be false.

I don't hear near as many vocal NO votes and Strike Advocates at the Overhaul Base as there appears to be on this forum. Just like at NWA I see postings on here that ignore the truth about those scabs and pretend it couldnt happen again. I bet there are 1000 scabs in the TWU working in Tulsa right now. Starting with the Local Union Officers themselves.

Don't look for me to risk everything over this T/A. Do I like it? Hell NO but I also know the TWU well enough to know what happens when they return to the table. We are being asked to subsidize poor management, union folk without discipline and accountability. We could work for $12 per hour and until that itself is corrected we have a real problem. I have not much hope anymore as the SCABS at NWA took the strike fight wind from my sails. Call me names all you want, try to convince me scabs wont happen at AA, try to convince me the Line AMT wouldn't sell out the Overhaul AMT if they were offered what they want. Good Luck because I trust nobody anymore.

Most interesting is the repeated request for someone to post the plan after the requested NO vote aand what in detail needs to be changed, all I have gotten in return was silence.

 

[Bagbelt]

I apologise for being a smart a$$, I never thought a worse deal than 95 would come out and it's sickening. I bailed when I had the chance but still have many friends and a pension there. I would gladly watch my pension get wiped out to see a stand made. What baffles me is the same union that can shut NY down would bring back any document eliminating a pension and medical for any group. With the trade off in benes anything less than $40 an hour should not even be considered.. and it would still be less than WN.

 

[PlayTheOdds]

I still say the profession killers were 1000+ A&P Scabs at NWA Airlines.

Overhaul and Line are obviously in two different boats when it comes to a fight.

I will admit that watching 1000 plus scabs show up at NWA changed my perspective about this profession and the belief that we are unreplaceable. That thought process will never change for me. I watched as the NWA AMT was pumped full of ideas that sounded good when talked about, but when test came the Scabs proved many of those ideas to be false.

Come on TWU Ken has offered a challenge of saying no to this TA. There hasn't even been a fight yet and you are throwing in the towel. After all what could, "a handful of Scabs", possibly do? Do you really think it was a handful of scabs that killed the profession? I honestly think that you are a smarter man than that. I think that a "handful of Scabs" might have destroyed the whole idea of unionism as it exists today but it certainly didn't kill the profession. I will leave that to the overseas MRO's and the AMTA with its Charles E. Taylor busts that continues to kill the A&P Craft for recognizing all the AMT's and enforcing their title even though they might not hold an A&P license.

 

[Boomer]

Dave, I don't know that too many people really know the full impact. Hell, half the Senators and Representatives who voted on it had no idea what they were actually voting on -- they just followed the instructions from Barry, Nancy & Harry....

My company has been acting as though nothing has or will happen. I suspect a lot of other employers are taking a similar status quo view for planning 2011 benefits.

_________________________________________________________

LINK PROVIDED:
AMR Self-Insured Health PlAAns "Grandfathered" for five years


"...4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months..."
_______________________________________________________________

LINK PROVIDED:
Obama To Penalize Self-Insured Companies that seek to eliminate plans or cost-shift to employees.

White House moves to keep employers from dropping insurance
By Mike Lillis - 06/14/10 08:19 PM ET

The White House on Monday outlined broad new rules designed to prevent employers from dropping health insurance benefits for their workers or shifting huge new costs onto them.
The regulations empower the administration to revoke the so-called grandfather status of businesses that shift “significant” new burdens onto employees — a considerable penalty that would subject those plans to all the consumer protections in the Democrats’ new healthcare reform law.

Unveiling the rules Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters that the changes will make good on one of the administration’s central promises during the contentious debate over reform: “If you like your doctor and your plan, you keep it,” she said.

Democrats exempted existing health insurance plans from a number of provisions of the new law as a concession to the insurance industry and business community. For example, grandfathered plans — those up and running when the legislation became law in March — don’t have to offer an insurance product without a cost-sharing requirement. Businesses, particularly large companies, prefer that arrangement because they don’t have to make sweeping changes to their existing plans.

The new rules say that employers can make “routine and modest” adjustments to their premium, deductible and co-pay requirements, Sebelius said, but “significant” cost hikes or benefit cuts would cost them their exempted status. The goal is to ensure that grandfathered plans “don’t use this additional flexibility to take advantage of their customers,” she said.

“We don’t want a massive shift of cost to employees,” Sebelius said.

Officials expect the new rules to have the greatest impact on the roughly 133 million employees at large companies, whose insurance offerings tend to remain more stable than at smaller businesses. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told reporters Monday that the new rules will help “minimize market disruptions.”

Republicans, however, are not convinced. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday that the rules would force more than half of the U.S. workforce out of their current health plan — which “flatly contradicts” Democrats’ promises during the debate.

“Here’s one more promise the administration has broken on healthcare,” McConnell said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the Finance Committee, echoed that message, calling the rules “more proof” that, under the new law, “you actually can’t keep what you like.”

“Change is coming for a lot of people,” Grassley said in a statement, “whether they want it or not.”

The new rules came on the same day analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a report projecting that employers’ healthcare costs will jump by 9 percent in 2011. The authors predict that employers next year will shift more costs onto workers, hiking deductibles and replacing co-pays with co-insurance policies.

The White House was quick to push back against the report, pointing out that the employer surveys on which it was based were conducted before the Democrats’ reform bill was passed. Also, the analysts noted that the new reform law, much of which takes effect in 2014, had only a “minor” influence on next year’s cost trends.

Asked about the report Monday, Sebelius conceded that many people will wonder why all the benefits of the health reform law don’t begin immediately. Still, she added, the survey “argues the case that we could absolutely not afford to do nothing.”

“People are being absolutely priced out of the marketplace,” she said.
Source:
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/103131-white-house-unveils-rules

 

[Boomer]

What I meant to say is that if you have insurance already it is pretty much status quo, the new law is basically for individuals and small businesses who cannot buy insurance through a pool.

Do you still think that the OBAMACARE, sponsored by the TWU and the AFL-CIO, will only impact small businesses and the self-employed?

OBTW, how has the state budget for MASS OBAMACARE fared since enactment by Mitt Romney?

 

[FWAAA]

White House moves to keep employers from dropping insurance
By Mike Lillis - 06/14/10 08:19 PM ET

The White House on Monday outlined broad new rules designed to prevent employers from dropping health insurance benefits for their workers or shifting huge new costs onto them.
The regulations empower the administration to revoke the so-called grandfather status of businesses that shift “significant” new burdens onto employees — a considerable penalty that would subject those plans to all the consumer protections in the Democrats’ new healthcare reform law.

Excellent post, Boomer. A few weeks ago, eolesen posted a story outlining how IBM and others were analyzing whether they should cancel their health plans and pay the penalty, which was only about 20% or 25% of the annual health plan costs, IIRC.

Unless Obamacare is drastically amended (or Congress outlaws the practice), I can see AMR (and many other companies) deciding that the time is right to terminate their employee health plans and let the employees go to the exchanges with (at least) some of the cost savings.

Problem is, employer-paid health insurance is a nontaxable fringe for the most part but increased compensation (from some or all of the savings frrom canceling the health plan) is taxable income to the employees. That alone would eat up a bunch of the savings.