*shaking head*

[Beest]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I don;t see how it is a complicated notion that the health insurance given to employees becomes their property - and it should be up to them how they use it.

My employer doesn't have to right to tell me how to spend what it pays me.

As henry quirk says the employer contracts with the insurance company the employee is just a covered party.

The insurance isn't provided to the employee at no cost, the employer can then take the cost of the insurance out of the employees pay check ( or some proportion). The employee cannot just refuse the insurance either, unless they can prove alternate coverage. (That's how it works for me).
So yes, the employer is spending the employees pay.

At my corporation employees earning over $150K gross are responsible for 100% of the $22K cost of insurance. and it's crappy insurance for that money.
Theres sliding scale below that.
The big investor that owns this corporation and many others sets this as standard across all his companies.

"Insurance" is a misnomer anyway but I don't know a better word, "shell game" might be it. On our insurance you can still easily be out of pocket for thousands for day to day occurences, it just limits it instead of climbing into the tens of thousands in a dire circumstance.

[henry quirk]

Please, call me Henry...

[henry quirk]

"Repugnant is an emotion."

I wrote 'morally repugnant' which, to my mind, is part and parcel with 'religious objection'.

*shrug*

#

"Court has said an employeer can impose his religious beliefs on his employees."

No.

The SC said the owners of a tightly owned/closely held company can refuse to pay (in part or in total) for services or products they, the owners, have a religious objection to.

The HL folks are evangelicals...the ruling imposes no obligations on, for example, an atheist to 'do' things the HL folks find religiously acceptable...the ruling only says the atheist 'can't' make the HL folks pay for (in part or in total) services or products the HL folks object to on religious grounds.

That's it...that's all.

There may be unintended consequences because of the ruling (as opportunists try to twist the ruling to suit themselves), but the ruling itself is unambiguous.

[henry quirk]

"The inherent problem is employer-provided insurance"

Only when it's mandatory.

If Joe wants to provide catastrophic insurance to all of his employees, that's on Joe.

If Joe wants to pay (some or all of) his employees enough so that each can attend to his or her medical needs as each sees fit, that's on Joe.

If Joe enters into idiosyncratic contracts with (some or all) individual employees to provide or make accessible 'this' or 'that', that's on Joe.

It's the mandatory nature of employer-based insurance that's the problem.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

"The inherent problem is employer-provided insurance"

Only when it's mandatory.

If Joe wants to provide catastrophic insurance to all of his employees, that's on Joe.

If Joe wants to pay (some or all of) his employees enough so that each can attend to his or her medical needs as each sees fit, that's on Joe.

If Joe enters into idiosyncratic contracts with (some or all) individual employees to provide or make accessible 'this' or 'that', that's on Joe.

It's the mandatory nature of employer-based insurance that's the problem.

Except when employer-provided coverage is the norm, then rates are artificially inflated, a one-size-fits-all policy is chosen by someone in HR rather than the individuals it's supposed to serve, and anyone who doesn't have employer coverage is effectively barred from getting a policy at all because they have no collective bargaining to offer.

All of which were addressed by Obamacare, and slowly we are seeing good things from it (a huge increase this year in the number of insurance companies offering new plans on the open exchanges, for example, with competition driving down prices as it should,) but we have a long way to go before people really give up this stupid idea that your job should be in charge of those decisions for you.

[henry quirk]

"So if an employer sexually exploits woman and grab their asses, well, the women should simply go elsewhere to work."

Or: punch the fucker in the head.

[henry quirk]

I'll say it again: the SC ruling sets a bad precedent.

I can see all manner of unintended consequence extending out from the ruling.

Better the HL folks had attacked the problem from the position of 'property' (the right of owners of property to do with said property as the owners like).