Health Care Insurance -- Connecting A Couple Of Dots -- September 25, 2019

I don't know if folks remember this story of just a couple of days ago: Jeff Bezos cut off health insurance for part-time workers at Whole Foods. Wow, my wife thought that was "criminal."

I had heard the report/headline (maybe on the radio?) but did not read the story. I argued that it might not be due to costs alone.

With a headline story over at the WSJ today, I went back to check the Whole Foods story. The lede:

National grocery chain Whole Foods, which is owned by multibillion-dollar corporation Amazon, is cutting medical benefits for hundreds of part-time employees, Business Insider reported today. The decision, according to the company, is designed “to better meet the needs of our business and create a more equitable and efficient scheduling model,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told BI.

I suggested to my wife at the time that there were may be reasons other than costs alone that drove the decision. I can go through those with you sometime if anyone is interested but that will be a story for another time.

So, how many Whole Foods folks are affected? From the linked story:

Whole Foods claims that the percentage of its workforce that’ll be affected by the cost-cutting measure, and therefore no longer eligible to purchase employer-provided health care, is less than 2 percent. (That equates to nearly 2,000 people.)

One affected employee, who’s worked for Whole Foods for 15 years, told Business Insider they were “in shock,” as the company’s benefits options were why they held on to the job. [Parse that sentence.]

Now, the headline story over at The WSJ today:

From the linked story:

The average total cost of employer-provided health coverage passed $20,000 for a family plan this year, according to a new survey, a landmark that will likely resonate politically as health care has become an early focus of the presidential campaign.

Annual premiums rose 5% to hit $20,576 for an employer-provided family plan in 2019, according to the yearly poll of employers by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. On average, employers bore 71% of that cost, while employees paid the rest.

Cutting off health insurance from Whole Foods parttime workers may or may not be "crimianl" to use my wife's words, but certainly, $20,000/year/family for health insurance is.

Thirty percent of $20,000 is $6,000 but that does not count deductibles and co-pays. I don't know to what extent it includes prescription drugs.

This also explains why the unemployment number is so low.

Once the Dems decide on their presidential nominee, Trump better get ahead of this story. He's not responsible; the US House has done nothing on this issue but Trump will be held accountable by the media.