Affordable Care Act costs cause Walmart to drop coverage for 30,000 part-time employees

Back in 2011, Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer argued that Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, would result in some employers dropping their existing coverage and forcing employers onto the exchanges.

Henwood's original article can be found here. Paul Krugman, the well-known liberal economist, argued that this would not happen, and criticised a survey that predicted this would occur. Relying on another source Krugman suggests that the survey is not a reliable predictor of what will happen since most of the participants who answered the questionaire did not know how much on average they spent on health care per full-time employee: When asked how much their companies spend on medical and prescription drug benefits per full-time employee – something you might expect a health benefit pro to be intimately familiar with – 58.3% said they didn’t know. While this is correct, Henwood points out some neglected aspects in the criticism. The question was actually somewhat more complicated than described in the quote but even more telling only about 10 per cent of the respondents were health benefit pros. However, they are still quite capable of judging that they will be spending more under Obamacare.
Recent news reports in the Wall Street Journal support Henwood's prediction. Wal-Mart is both cutting coverage for 30,000 part-time workers--or associates as Walmart calls them--and also raising premiums for others. The moves are designed to contain costs as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Many companies are shifting more of their costs onto their employees. Wal-Mart with 1.4 million "associates" predicts that its health care costs will rise $500 million more than it had predicted for the year ending this coming January. Sally Welborn, senior vice president of global benefits said that the company had to keep its eye on costs but would not say how much Wal-Mart expected to save by its moves. Beginning in 2015 Obamacare will require large companies to provide health care coverage for most of their employees who work at least 30 hours per week or pay a penalty starting at 2,000 per worker. However, many companies are finding it cheaper to simply pay the penalty than provide the coverage. Individual employers are then forced to purchase coverage on government exchanges.
 Walmart is not the only corporation to join in the parade to drop coverage. Target has said it would stop offering benefits to part-time workers. Home Depot also ended coverage for 20,000 part-time workers. No doubt Obamacare does have some positive features. For instance, many more Americans now have health insurance when they had none before.
 Nevertheless Obamacare so criticized by the right wing is actually a conservative's dream and based upon conservative principles as an article by a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in the New York Times points out: The plan has few champions on the left precisely because it is not a government takeover of health care. It is not a single-payer system, nor “Medicare for all”; it does not include a “public option,” a health plan offered by a federal insurer. It is a ratification of market ideas, modified to address problems unique to health insurance. Yet, Obamacare is defended by many of the liberal left including Krugman no doubt as the lesser evil compared to what the Republicans might do.
According to Obama the Affordable Care Act is a great example of legislation not moulded by special interests as he claimed just after passge of the act: “Tonight, we pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. … We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people.” Even before he spoke the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America also hailed the health bill as important and historic. A Wall Street Journal blog hailed the act as a great opportunity for investors. Among the big winners are not only health care providers and pharmaceutical companies but the big health insurance companies as well, as even Forbes notes as well as others. Far from showing that the Obama administration can push back against undue influence of special interests, the Affordable Care Act shows the exact opposite.
The defender of the single payer system in the appended video is incorrect when he speaks of their being no co-pays at least in many systems. "Reforms" are constantly degrading existing universal systems with less coverage and increased co-pays to shift costs from the government onto the individual, although the Canadian system does not allow co-pays.

Wanted ungreen oily environmentalists: good pay

Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study
By Ian Sample
The Guardian UK

Friday 02 February 2007

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".

Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said.

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.

"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."

One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain. "You wouldn't know if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university.

The contents of the IPCC report have been an open secret since the Bush administration posted its draft copy on the internet in April. It says there is a 90% chance that human activity is warming the planet, and that global average temperatures will rise by another 1.5 to 5.8C this century, depending on emissions.

Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientific institute, said: "The IPCC is the world's leading authority on climate change and its latest report will provide a comprehensive picture of the latest scientific understanding on the issue. It is expected to stress, more convincingly than ever before, that our planet is already warming due to human actions, and that 'business as usual' would lead to unacceptable risks, underscoring the urgent need for concerted international action to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. However, yet again, there will be a vocal minority with their own agendas who will try to suggest otherwise."

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.