Lion in Winter

Apparently too much even to have spelled "too" correctly.

Happy Saturday.

scrubbedexpat099

There is apparently a Dollar Store being built in the local store. So when they open and take on staff let us say they offer $10 an hour which seems unlikely but just for argument.

30 hours x 50 weeks = $15,000

40 hours x 50 weeks = $20,000

If they are required to pay Medical Insurance that would on average be $14,000 a year from another thread on this subject.

I just can not imagine that this sort of on cost would make the store viable. Or any low wage job.

Now many on this board are in better paid jobs where the near doubling of costs to take someone on does not apply.

I think I read that the average Burger joint has a profit margin of 3%, Labour probably 30% or so of costs without Health insurance.. So what do you expect?

Michael

One of the problems is that medicare/medicaid costs the government 5% of the cost of medicare/medicaid payments to administer the programs but insurance companies have administration costs of 20%-40%. Obamacare currently requires health insurance companies to have no more than 15% administration costs for group plans and 20% for individual plans and that has helped to keep medical inflation below 4% which is the lowest annual increase in 50 years but somehow all insurance companies in California recently announced premium price increases of between 8% and 25% for 2013. I suspect the insurance companies hired themselves some very good lawyers to get around that law by looking for loopholes and filing lawsuits contending unfair commerce restrictions.

As far as fast food joints having low profits, Papa John's pizza claims that the cost will be prohibitive and can't afford to pay for health care for it's employees. However after a firm investigated the claim, it was discovered that the average price of a pizza would need to be increased between $0.11 and $0.15 to cover the cost of health insurance for employees or they could reduce executive salaries by 5% to cover the cost. I think that is a pretty low price to significantly reduce the number of people in the underclass in the US.

Several low margin profit companies such as Walmart support health care reform under the assumption that competitive companies that don't provide health care have a competitive advantage for higher profits on the backs of their employees. With that competitive advantage, this could possibly force other companies to eliminate employee provided health care to remain competitive. I agree with Walmart since that would be no different than eliminating minimum wage laws so that companies can increase profits creating only two classes of people (the rich and the poor and no longer a middle class).

This process of reducing benefits for the middle class has been occurring since the 1980's and since that time, real medium family income has remained stagnant or declined while the richest real income has more than doubled. If that trend continues, the richest will own nearly 100% of the of all the wealth and the US will become a third world country.

Therefore for companies to remain competitive, they must eliminate employee health care. Therefore single payer health care seems to be one of the few options available to eliminate the discrepancy in employee provided health care and to control costs.

JRG67

Cute

JRG67

There are far too many middle -managers in any organization these days doing FA all day. If these people were cut out of the equation, then maybe the companies could afford to pay medical insurance for the people actually doing some physical labour.
I wouldn't be surprised if slavery was brought back to the USA. (The Northern States only opposed it as they were worried about poor white people in their states becoming unemployed)

Lion in Winter

I don't buy this. If the rest of the developed world can sort out a way to provide universal health care - and they aren't all bankrupt, are they - then surely the richest nation in the world can figure it out?

Ethelred_the_Unready

There's too much corporate bureaucracy in the US healthcare system, too many private insurers, the entire system is too fragmented to the point of ridiculousness. I mean, look how many MRI centers, various specialists and other diagnostic centers and pain clinics there are. Surely it'd be more economical to have at least 85% of your healthcare needs taken care of in a doctor's surgery or an actual hospital (in patients or out patients)?

If you believe that healhcare is a right rather than a privilege, then the free market has little or no place.

scrubbedexpat099

Medical Insurance, or shall we say Medical costs is not variable according to salary, could be argued that it is inversely proportional to salary.

30% labour costs on t/o is a target in the fast food industry.

Providing medical costs would nearly double the cost of employment. take an $8 ticket to $10. Apparently McDonalds showed a t/o reduction, all are being hit by the recession.

So what are the options?

Set up separate companies for each location, each one employing less than 50.

The likes of TGI, Applebees etc are likely to employ more that 50 per location so reduce hours is the best bet.

This is not a case of unforeseen consequences.

Lion in Winter

Not sure about "right", but in my view in an advanced society health care should be viewed as a service, not an "industry", or business - because we all need it equally, irrespective of income and ability to pay at the point of delivery. It is not a product or a luxury, whereby the harder you work the more you earn the right to get more of it because you earned the money to pay for it. Socialized medicine isn't free and it isn't a handout. Everyone pays for it. It is only free at the point of delivery. That's what a society does, and that is what the government we elect should do for us - solve problems society wide that it is not possible for individuals to solve.

Michael

So it sounds like you agree with most conservatives and prefer a race to the bottom instead of using better health care concepts from developed countries from around the world to reduce the cost of health care and improve care. It is obvious that the current US health care system is the most expense in the world and at best produces mediocre results for a significant portion of the population.

The system is broken and must be totally revamped to make the system competitive with other developed nations. Letting insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, and the AMA dictate prices with no competition has proven to be a total failure and more of that will not produce better care and lower prices.

Unfortunately among the developed countries, only the US hasn't realized that health care is not a commodity and can't be treated like a commodity since free market forces don't work for health care.

JRG67

Hear hear! Same goes for education.

Ethelred_the_Unready

That's what a lot of Americans don't understand about the NHS, for example. It's not free at all; we still pay for it, but it's a shared pool and it allows for anyone to use it, regardless of income. While the NHS isn't the best model for socialised medicine out there, I would still trade it for the nonsensical mess over here, where your health, well being and potentially your survival odds are tied to employment...and employers have been cutting back benefits since the turn of the recession.

I don't know what the solution is for America. At this point, it would cost trillions to introduce an American NHS and I don't even think it would work here as it does in the UK, plus too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that socialised medicine is evil. The best bet would be for more left leaning states to try to implement something once the economy improves. Massachusetts has MassCare. Vermont is actually bringing about a public healthcare system which will go ahead now that Obama was victorious:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/ver...jSK/story.html

So perhaps the best hope for now is that individual states start to see the light, or perhaps the entire system needs to be bankrupted in order for real change to be enacted. It's a shame, because the rest of the developed world is proof that the cheaper option is at least a public option, or a more regulated public/private system such as Germany's healthcare system is the answer.

I don't see any change happening at federal level though, unless the shit really hits the fan. Hopefully I'll be long gone before that happens.

HarryTheSpider

This may be true if the current scale of medical costs is used. The USA per capita costs are approx. 2x those of the next most expensive country's costs...

So the cost scale needs to be changed too...

And a single-payer system will spread the costs over more people...
And with so many people no longer relying on the incredible costs of using ER services, which ultimately get paid by the Feds and those who do pay, the cost base will further come down...

No the incentives change - in the US it is in the financial interests of every healthcare provider to have you keep coming back... In the UK (NHS) the incentive is to get you fixed and not coming back, because of the way providers are paid... So the emphasis can switch more to preventative medicine, and the promotion of well-being... Diet, exercise, etc etc

It does mean powerful vested interests will have to accept lower profit levels or find some other line of work. Shame...

JRG67

Coward!

robin1234

That is very true. Once you've had your initial visit they want to see you every six months, in perpetuity. For instance I asked my doctor "what are these blemishes on my skin could those be pre cancerous lesions?". So he said, I don't really know but I'll send you to the dermatologist. So after a couple of months wait, I get to see the dermatologist who examines me and identifies pre cancerous lesions! She zaps them with the liquid nitrogen or whatever it is.. Come back in six months! Now I'm on that treadmill, see the dermatologist every six month and she zaps me. Only costs forty dollars a time, no biggie, but then there's the urologist too.. Sometimes I feel I need to retire just to free enough time to visit these various specialists every six months.