Thursday, October 28, 2010

What does Obamacare mean to me?

I've been relatively quiet on Obamacare and the call by a lot of people to repeal it. A couple of days ago, I received an email that explained the impact to me personally. I have medical insurance through my employer. We are self-insured, that is, the employer ends up paying for all payouts. I pay into the program for family coverage (include medical, dental and vision care) and my employer pays also. All of the money is pooled together to pay out actual costs. The care is managed by one of the big insurance companies.

There are other plans available through my employer, but I've pretty much stuck with the same program over the years. My employer sent the following email (I've edited it to remove personal information):

This year, XYZ Corp had a team working for months to understand health care reform legislation.  Some of this work continues, which is one reason we are communicating with you a bit later than we usually do. We understand many of you align your decision-making with that of working spouses or domestic partners, which is why we have worked to keep the actual enrollment for employees on schedule.

You should be aware that health care cost increases for 2011 -- in addition to the normal inflationary trends -- also are affected by health care reform requirements, which affect both XYZ Corp and you.  For example, raising the age for dependent coverage from age 23 to 26 contributes somewhat to higher costs for businesses, as we must now all extend coverage to greater numbers of young adults.

There's more to the email, but that pretty much sums it up.

2 comments:

turell's raves said...

I thought the same thing when I received this very email from XYZ corp.

Randy said...

If you received the same email, I suspect we both work for XYZ. If so, look me up on our internal email directory and send me a note. I looked at your profile and couldn't figure out who you are...