Quote:
Originally Posted by Orruar
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Ah, I was speaking of people our age. Old folks use a lot of health care, but not necessarily for insurable events, just "getting older" problems. This chart kind of shows what I'm talking about.
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Your understanding of history and economics is sorely lacking. Companies don't offer health insurance "based on compensation structures of other similar businesses" just for that reason. They structure it like they do because government regulations make the current structure most effective in giving the employee the maximum amount of compensation for the least amount of cost to the business owner. They could offer us 100% pay and no benefits, but then the employer would have to pay more money overall to get the same bang for their buck. If we removed all tax incentives, you would see many more companies with no health insurance, giving their employees cash instead. You don't buy your car insurance, food, housing, or any other goods through your employer. Why don't you do these things? For economic reasons, and the same economic reasons would encourage you to buy health insurance on the open market absent government influence is keeping our health insurance tied to our job.
You seem to agree with me at first, but then only to a degree. It seems you understand that people are just as greedy as the employers. And you have to realize that people aren't stupid. If they were suddenly without health insurance through the employer and needed to pay another $5k a year on insurance, they would ask their employer for nearly all of that in increased compensation. In fact, I bet this process would happen automatically for most companies, as employees would be incredibly unhappy to suddenly lose such a big chunk of compensation. Companies that don't immediately increase compensation when the health coverage goes away would lose a lot of people. You have to remember that people who run businesses aren't as economically ignorant as you. And lucky for you many of us employees aren't either, and we'd make sure our (and by extension your) compensation rises as it should in this case. |
I don't really understand the maliciousness in your tone. Calling me ignorant and telling me what I have no background or experience with is quite comical really. I don't pretend to know you, and for that reason I don't pretend to know what you do and don't know simply because I don't agree with you.
That said, I still disagree whole heartidly. It doesn't matter that we as employees would ask for the money our employers would be saving, they would have
zero incentive to give it. I'm fairly confident they would just as soon have us walk away entirely.
The reason is that if everyone within a given industry did that, the compensation plans accross that industry would still be competitive, which is part of why we are receiving those benefits in the first place.
When the comeptition anywhere within the same industry is the same, the threat to walk and go elsewhere does not exist.
You're correct in that I do partially agree with you, because I feel for a given industry if this were to occur then pay would indeed rise, but like I said not by much, and definately nowhere near 100% of what our employers had been paying.