Companies continue to cut Health Coverage, Hours, due to Obamacare

[cpwill]

Worth noting is that the CBO estimates heavily depended on companies not doing this in order to keep the costs of the exchanges down.

Mid- and large-sized companies overwhelmingly expect health-care costs to increase under Obamacare—and most are eyeing possible changes to their health insurance offerings because of a looming excise tax for pricier plans under the health-care reform law, a new survey of employers finds.

In fact, 40 percent of 420 companies surveyed by Towers Watson said they will be changing their insurance plans' designs in 2014 in light of the coming excise tax as well as to control employee-related health costs.

And nearly 60 percent of the companies view private health insurance exchanges as a possible way to control their health-care and administrative costs by shifting the work of insuring their workers off to those exchanges in the future....

UPS to drop 15,000 spouses from insurance, cites Obamacare

...Rising medical costs, “combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost,” UPS said in a memo to employees.

According to Kaiser, UPS (NYSE: UPS) told white-collar workers two months ago that 15,000 working spouses eligible for coverage by their own employers would be excluded from the UPS plan in 2014.

UPS expects the move, which applies to non-union U.S. workers only, to save about $60 million a year, company spokesman Andy McGowan said.

The health law requires large employers to cover employees and dependent children, but not spouses or domestic partners, Kaiser adds....

Citing ObamaCare as a reason, the the University of Virginia has announced that spouses of University employees who have access to health insurance through their own jobs will no longer be eligible for health insurance coverage.

In its announcement, President Obama's healthcare plan is specifically mentioned by UVa as a reason for the rising costs that forced the university to drop working spouses. ObamaCare is expected to add $7 million to the university's health care costs....

An influential Charlottesville, Va., money management team claims that Obamacare has forced many firms in Thomas Jefferson's hometown to switch to part-time workers, and that one manager was told he'd be fired if he hired a 50th full-time worker, the number that triggers the costly health care system.

"Economic self-defense has many firms forcing their employees to work less than 30 hours a week regardless of their preference or availability. This trend seems to be universal even here in Charlottesville," David John Marotta and Megan Russell of Marotta Wealth Management said in an online memo to investors. The firm handles many Charlottesville investors....

Their memo suggests that Obamacare is resulting in a "jobless" recovery.

"This is part of the reason why employment statistics show part-time employment on the rise while the number of hours being worked remains constant. It also explains the economic benefits of outsourcing, sending jobs overseas or using technology to replace workers. These alternatives to employment can save money by avoiding the Obamacare employer mandates even if they appear to cost more on paper," wrote the money managers...

Choo - Choo!

 

[Diogenes]

This was perfectly predictable, and widely predicted. Unfortunately the CBO is required to base their analyses on assumptions that are given to them, and progressive fantasies are allowed to obscure common sense predictions of human behavior.

 

[soot]

Good topic. I was in the middle of putting this thread toghter earlier and got side-tracked.

This same buzz is coming from literally everywhere in the insurance/brokerage/benefits/OPEB/consultant industry. Aon Hewitt, Marsh McLennan, NEPC, Mercer, corporations, corporate pension plans, public pension plans, you name it.

The PPACA opened up a huge back door.

The seemingly universal plan sponsor response to the PPACA is "Wow, awesome, we can dump coverage on low and middle-low income earners and save our shareholders a ton of money".