Bethany Mandel:
Year after year, Forbes magazine places Wegmans Food Markets high on its “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, usually in the top five in the country. The supermarkets are based in Rochester, New York, a region that has been hit hard by economic stagnation, with downsizing at several companies (like Xerox and Kodak) that were once the biggest employers in the region. Wegmans has been a refuge for many employees, drawn to its generous salaries, bonuses, and benefits package. Last year Forbes cited its low turnover rate (3.4 percent last year) as a factor in why the supermarkets are such popular places to work. Despite the critical role that the supermarket chain plays in the local economy, Wegmans became a less coveted place to work this summer when it was announced that some part-time workers’ health benefits would be cut thanks to ObamaCare and earlier this week it was announced that Trader Joe’s would do the same.
I’ve discussed the impact of ObamaCare on businesses quite a few times on this blog: on the restaurant industry, on individual small businesses, and on young people and part-time workers. This summer two stories emerged from two supermarket chains, Wegmans and Trader Joe’s, which have been held up by many on the left as shining examples of “responsible” corporate behavior. Their workers are paid highly (liberals describe it as “fairly”) and are rewarded with coveted and expensive perks like health insurance coverage. According to the Huffington Post, a number of part-time workers interviewed at Trader Joe’s worked there just to receive the subsidized insurance. Now that the insurance will have to be purchased on the ObamaCare exchanges market, workers are understandably wary of how far their budgets will be stretched in order to maintain the coverage they had before the president swooped in to make their insurance more “affordable.”
The latest liberal spin from ThinkProgress posits that the fact that more people are being pushed onto ObamaCare exchanges proves that the law is working as intended. Sadly, that’s not untrue. When the president stood in front of crowds of nervous Americans, he assured them that if they liked their insurance they’d be able to keep it. Conservatives expressed doubt. Conservatives knew then, as we know now, that it was a baldfaced lie. It was never the intention of the law to keep Americans on their own privately obtained health insurance plans. The few people who read the bill beforehand knew that, and human resources departments nationwide are coming to the same conclusion. It is prohibitively expensive to continue to provide the coverage mandated by the law, which is why we hear stories every day of workers being pushed to part-time status, and why many previously fortunate part-timers are losing the coverage they once enjoyed.
Trader Joe’s will give all of the 23% of their employees (who work fewer than 30 hours/week) a $500/yr stipend toward their own health coverage.
Depending on how much their household makes, most of them ought to be able to save over what their current subsidized insurance costs.
But, if their household is making too much money as a whole, they will be paying about the same as they pay now.
So, it is sort of a wash.
The main thing is that these employees will be thrown onto the exchanges.
So, no matter if they liked their doctor or not, it is unlikely they will get to keep him.
Time to get over the lies and accept the fact that OC is here, it’s going to work and save everyone money:
Pennsylvania’s GOP Governor Flips To Support Obamacare Medicaid Expansion: Reports
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/12/pennsylvania-medicaid-expansion_n_3915978.html
Americans For Prosperity’s Latest Obamacare Lies
http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/americans-prosperitys-latest-obamacare#sthash.fEClDsFF.dpbs
@This one: “…..get over the lies????…..it’s going to work and save everyone money….” from a guy who cites Occupy?
That’s funny.
But who are you talking to?
Obama’s own administration has amended or delayed ObamaCare 19 times.
Obama, himself, has already signed 14 bills into law that changed or killed parts of ObamaCare and delayed another five key pieces that proved unworkable.
Obama’s administration has missed half of the deadlines set in the law.
How many states are ready to open their exchanges on Oct 1st?
NONE!
Liberal unions are screaming about the harm it will cause…..
One set of union leaders said:
I don’t think Republicans are who you should aim your venom at.
These above are all the work of DEMOCRATS.
Take the blinders off.
@This one:
Same questions I have asked numerous times about how on earth obamacare can possibly save money:
1. How does adding layers upon layers of government bureaucracy cut the cost of healthcare?
2. If obamacare costs are going to be cheaper then pre-obamacare insurance provided by employers why are employers dumping workers onto the exchanges, stating tbe cost of obamacare is too expensive?
3. How does adding the cost of navigators (who will only serve to help people sign onto obamacare, but not provide any actual medical care) at $20-$43/hr lower the cost of obamacare?
4. How does raising taxes on workers to pay for all the vaunted obamacare subsidies for people making up to 400% above the poverty line lower the cost of obamacare? Isn’t the fact that we even have to pay for subsidies like this a clear statement that obamacare will be too expensive?
5. Finally, when medicare was first proposed in the 1960s, supporters made all kinds of projections on future costs that turned out to be roughly 87 times less than the actual cost by the 1980s. Upon what basis does anyone think obamacare won’t explode well beyond the ridiculously rosy cost estimates the left is touting now?
We are only just beginning to find out how much obamacare will cost. Let’s not forget the 16,000 NEW IRS agents that will be hired. The bill is an open-ended bill that can be added onto any time, and it has been. The original bill that was about 3,000 pages, now measures over 7 feet tall, and is still growing. Hidden in the bill are over 100 NEW federal agencies that will require funding. How many NEW employees will need to be hired? How many buildings will need to be built or rented? How much will the overall expenses be for them? Are the liberals willing to pay for all of this?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/02/house-republicans-new-bureaucracies-health-care/
I wonder how many more NEW federal employees the liberals are willing to pay for. obama has already been averaging 101 NEW hires per day since he was elected. Do the liberals want to keep paying for obama’s 101 new employees per day for another three years? The total hires and salaries at that rate will be: 365 days in a year X 101 each day = 36,865 per year X 8 years = 294,920 total new hires X $50,000 average per year (a number I picked at random) = $14,746,000,000 per year at the end of obama’s reign. You also have to add in the extra benefits they will get. That isn’t figuring in the 16,000 new IRS agents. Are the liberals willing to pay that much EXTRA for salaries each year after their leader leaves?
How much higher will the taxes go up to pay for all of the king’s domain? I’m guessing that the incumbents in congress are OK with these numbers, because it gives them more people under their authority, and more money to control.
Have you ever seen This One ever engage in a discussion? He just appears like a giant bird dropping from the sky and then leaves until another thread is produced.
@Randy: #6
He’s either someone working to get democrats elected, or he just likes to see what he can stir up. I usually don’t waste my time with people like him, but sometimes I like to have a little fun with them.
“This one” is a clueless drive by poster. P.T. Barnum would love him.
And this, from an MSNBC reporter, no less….
“The nation’s largest labor federation is going on the record for the very first time that Obamacare will be bad medicine for its union members,” reported MSNBC’s Brian Schactman. “The resolution says costs will skyrocket for insurance plans that are jointly run by unions and smaller companies, leaving workers no choice but to drop coverage.”
Another story proclaiming exactly what we conservatives said would be the result of socialist health care: http://m.lvsun.com/news/2013/aug/21/nevada-afl-cio-condemns-obamacare/
From the article, describing the AFL-CIO passed resolution condemning obamacare: “The unintended consequences of the ACA will lead to the destruction of the 40 hour work week, higher taxes and force union members onto more costly plans,” the resolution reads.
And from the same article: Danny Thompson, the head of the Nevada State AFL-CIO told the Sun in an interview this week that they were led to believe that Obamacare would not change their Taft-Hartley union health plans under Obamacare. “We were told that if you liked the health insurance you had, then it would be left alone,” he said. “Well, it hasn’t been left alone.”
Even the Washington Post is having to admit (albeit VERY late in the debate) that obamacare is a horrible deal that people are not going to like: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/05/a-lot-of-unions-are-going-to-end-up-hating-obamacare/
So – as conservatives were clearly stating all along prior to the cramming of this incredibly stupid law down our throats in late December 2010 before the dems had to give up their control of both houses of Congress – everything Obama said about his socialist healthcare plan turns out to be bald-faced lies:
1. You won’t be able to keep your insurance nor, most likely, your doctor.
2. The cost of health insurance is going to go up, not down.
3. Everyone’s taxes (for those who actually pay taxes) are going up to pay for the ever-increasing costs of this socialist power grab, in spite of the repeated lies from Obama that taxes were not going to go up by a single dime for people making less than $250,000.
4. The imposition of obamacare is going to negatively – and quite severely – impact the US economy, rather than increase jobs and improve the economy as Obama lied in his claims.
In closing – don’t think that the unions deserve an ounce of sympathy with their wailing and gnashing of teeth as they complain about the effects of obamacare. They pushed for obamacare and supported the marxist in the oval office. They are only throwing fits now because they assumed they would be exempt from the negative impact of obamacare, and now that they are learning how badly they will be getting hit under the law, they are demanding a legislative “fix” that boils down to the taxpayers having to pay for the unions to be exempted from the law. The unions are showing yet again that leftists are inherently selfish and utterly without shame.
One of Obama’s most consistent habits has been his, ”reward your friends, punish your enemies,” practices.
We’ve seen it in his ObamaCare waivers.
We’ve seen it in his campaigning speeches.
We’ve seen it with his housecleaning of so many Generals and Admirals.
We’ve seen it with the targeting of TEA Party organizations by his IRS.
Think it will stop with medical coverage?
Think again.
Obama quit White House tours for the public…..because he hates having to allow Americans to see how he keeps the place.
Obama hates the White House press corps.
But they are housed inside the White House whether he likes them or not.
So, how’s life for them inside the White House?
Since Obama’s presidency they have suffered from offices allowed to flood, then soaked carpets not repaired or replaced, mice leading to mousetraps all over their offices, the wondrous odors of untreated moldy walls and ceilings and cockroaches.
And to give you an even better idea of the totalitarian undercurrent to obamacare:
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/091313-671049-doctors-become-government-agents-under-obamacare.htm
This started even before obamacare, when the government began this creepy push to have doctors ask all kinds of personal and private questions that almost never had anything to do with the medical condition you for which you were seeing the doctor. Usually the questions the AAP was pushing had to do with whether or not there were guns in the home (which, combined with the AAP’s incessant push for single payer government health insurance led to my resignation from the AAP years ago)
Now, obamacare is putting an even more intrusive list of questions into the mix that physicians are required to ask patients under penalty of denied payment for service. As an inpatient doc, I don’t have to ask these questions because (for the moment) the obamacare organizers are forcing the questions under the guise of “preventive care”, and that isn’t something upon which I have to focus in the intensive care setting. When taking my kids in for their recent annual appointment, they quickly picked up on the stupidity and irrelevence of the questions. They also astutely noted that the time spent going through the list of questions was longer than the time spent on the physical exam and the actual reason for the appointment. Furthermore, the advice given by the advanced practitioner regarding dietary supplements and eating habits was totally incorrect – as my children have cystic fibrosis and do not fit into the “one size fits all arugala and water” diet pushed by obamacare. The sad thing is the NP already knew of my kids’ underlying diagnoses, but she continued blathering the government mandated dietary talking points. I was gratified that my kids knew she was wrong and discussed it with me afterwards, but I was disgusted because this type of cookie-cutter medicine is going to become the standard under obamacare.
Obamacare is inherently evil. Those who designed it pretend, lie and spew propaganda that the purpose is to provide “free” medical care to all. The reality is that obamacare is the first step in establishing totalitarian control over the distribution of medical care, and hence enslavement to the leftist agenda.
@Pete: #9
What is really interesting is how the unions lied to help promote obama’s agenda, and they know obama has been lying since they knew him, but now they are mad because they found out that he lied to THEM.
The AARP also pushed their members to ask their politicians to vote for obamacare. Any conservative that still belongs to them is just feeding the liberal machine, and helping the AARP make extra hundreds of millions of dollars from the extra coverage their members will need. There are several conservative organizations that have replaced the AARP, and they cost a lot less to join:
Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) amac.us
American Seniors Association (ASA) americanseniors.org
The Seniors Coalition senior.org/
Let’s support the ones who support us.
@Nan G: #10
I’m going to add to the list:
(1) The auto bailout. The only way Chrysler was allowed to get their money was to close ALL of their dealerships who donated to republicans.
(2) The stimulus. Most of the money went to districts that donated to obama.
They should feel right at home there. The propaganda media have lowered themselves so far down that the smell the rooms create can’t be as bad as the stink they have been creating for many years. They probably don’t even notice the smell.