22 Aug 2013 Did Their Spouses Like Their Insurance?

If you’ve been paying any attention to health care news over the last 24 hours, you are aware that both the United Parcel Service and the University of Virginia will, in some cases, not be providing health insurance to the spouses of their employees beginning next year.  Both cite rising cost due in part to ObamaCare as the cause. Here are a few thoughts:

1. Markets can find loopholes faster than the government can plug them up.  Remember when, at the beginning of ObamaCare, insurers selling child-only policies were required to sell to any child, regardless of the child’s health?  Well, insurance companies simply stopped selling child-only policies.  In the case of big businesses—or, at least, businesses with more than 50 employees—they were required to provide their full-time employees with insurance of pay a fine.  The “employer mandate” was suspended because the bureaucrats couldn’t get the regulations to work the Democrats in swing districts and states said, “Hey, Mr. President, a lot of companies back home are mad about this and their employees vote.  HELP!!!” But the law says nothing about companies having to sell insurance to their employees’ spouses.  So, if a company has to to buy more expensive insurance that meets the ObamaCare requirements, one way to save on costs is to dump the spousal units.  Can’t imagine how all those smart people who crafted ObamaCare missed that one.

2. If you like your health insurance you can keep it.

You remember this, don’t you?  Of course you do!  But for old times sake:

Ah, the good old days when that was still true.  Alas, assuming that at least some of the spouse of UPS or UVA employees like their health insurance, we now know that promise was garbage.  Of course, we should have known back then that it was garbage.  But better late then never.

3. Is the promise about keeping your doctor next to fall?  Who knows for certain?  But if some of those spouses end up with insurance that their current doctor does not take, then, yes, that promise goes down in flames too. So keep an eye out all you indefatigable reporters.  I’m sure a great story is there if you just start contacting employees at UPS and UVA.