Quote:
Originally Posted by Ike Bana
Well, whell...tough shit. Where were these whiny small business owners every time there was a premium hike over the last 45 years? They were where they are now...and what was their response? Passing it on to their employees, or dumping the nice PPO plans entirely and forcing some piece of shit HMO plan on the workers because it was putting a dent in their bottom line...and not a peep out of any of them. And not a peep out of the workers either, who had to change plans and change doctors. (Been through it a number of times myself with various and sundry providers and employers.)
But now...now when it's poor people finally having the opportunity to have coverage and now when it's the Kenyan anti-colonialist driving the changes in the structure...now it's an outrage.
Give it a rest.
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Ah, the voice of reason.
So, business exists for the sole purpose of providing comp and benefits to workers, huh?
Tell me something: what if YOU ran one of these businesses? After taking 10 - 20% increases in your health insurance costs every year for 15 - 20 years, would you just keep eating the increases, as you appear to want the "whiny small business owners" to do? You seem to be whining about the reduction of benefit levels in your post above, so I'm assuming that if you ran your own business, you'd just keep on taking the increases and not passing any of the year over year increases along to your employees. Nor would you ever consider modifying plan designs - just take the richest plan available and pay the premium for it, no matter the cost.
So, where would the money come from to pay the escalating premium costs year after year? I'm sure since you'd be such an astute business man, you'd figure out a way. I'm sure that you'd not pass along any increase to the customer, so you'd simply chose to take less in compensation every year to offset the cost of premium. And of course, your employees aren't simply going to continue to happily work for you without annual wage increases, so you'd simply take less in compensation to offset the cost of wage increases every year. No matter that we're still mired in a recession with around 1% economic growth, which means that new customers aren't lining up to buy your product and sales are pretty flat each year. You'll happily take less income yourself to offset these costs.
So, while you're happily reducing your salary to offset increasing employment costs, your cost of raw materials are going up. Your customers are demanding price concessions due the soft economy, or challenging payment and credit terms. You still need to make investments in plant maintenance and equipment. You still need to make payments to your investors and shareholders. And of course, your business taxes certainly aren't going down. No matter. You'll just continue to happily accept less for your hard work of running a business, 'cuz the prevailing wisdom is that you're a greedy bastard and reducing your employment costs to remain profitable simply risks reinforcing that stereotype.
Give it a rest.