« on: May 07, 2010, 11:51:34 AM »
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Documents reveal AT&T, Verizon, others, thought about dropping employer-sponsored benefits
(Fortune) -- The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans -- coverage they know and prize -- will react to the new law's radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we're getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.
Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill's critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.
That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama's statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we'll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America's employers would remain the backbone of the nation's health care system.
Logged
A people... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Benjamin Harrison
"Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%."
Thomas Jefferson
