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{"id":891,"date":"2013-08-22T21:14:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T21:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/ups-cuts-spousal-health-benefits-coverage-is-obamacare-at-fault.html"},"modified":"2013-08-22T21:14:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T21:14:00","slug":"ups-cuts-spousal-health-benefits-coverage-is-obamacare-at-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/ups-cuts-spousal-health-benefits-coverage-is-obamacare-at-fault.html","title":{"rendered":"UPS cuts spousal health benefits coverage — is ObamaCare at fault?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Well, yes and no.\u00a0 In the UPS announcement (linked to here, at the Via Meadia blog<\/a>), UPS specifically attributes the new policy to costs from ObamaCare, but more honestly that was a case of the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back.<\/p>\n

This policy \u2014 providing coverage only to spouses who do not have an alternate health insurance option \u2014 is hardly novel.\u00a0 I could go into my employer\u2019s benefits database and pull up a statistic on the percentage of employers who distinguish between working & \u201cdependent\u201d spouses in this way, but I\u2019d guess my employer wouldn\u2019t approve of my using company resources in that manner.\u00a0 So let\u2019s just a significant minority of employers do so.\u00a0 Maybe even more have started to since I changed roles and am no longer working as closely with American employee benefits.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

(I suspect this may even hit my family in the next benefit enrollment cycle, since I\u2019m on my husband\u2019s health insurance \u2014 because I work part-time, my cost for participating in my employer\u2019s health insurance\u00a0would be\u00a0higher than the additional premium of being a dependent on my husband\u2019s insurance.)<\/p>\n

Fact is, employers are looking at all kinds of ways of controlling their benefits costs.\u00a0 My employer is promoting to its clients \u2014 and we as employees had to participate in not long ago \u2014 a dependent eligibility audit, in which we had to provide marriage licenses (this was surprisingly hard to find \u2014 I don\u2019t think we\u2019d needed it since the wedding) and birth certificates.\u00a0 Wellness programs are becoming increasingly widespread, although, at least at my firm, it\u2019s still optional, and the reward for participating is modest.\u00a0 The percentage of subsidy for dependents is shrinking.\u00a0 And, of course, the company long ago priced its health insurance\u00a0options so that only the high-deductible plan makes sense.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, periodically, the firm releases survey data indicating that an increasing number of employers are considering bailing \u2014 either not providing health insurance at all, or abandoning their efforts at cost control and just passing all future cost increases onto employees.\u00a0 (Whether this will actually happen or is just an expression of employer frustration, I don\u2019t know.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that all the additional fees and requirements are making employer-provided healthcare more expensive (and the Kaiser study saying otherwise<\/a> isn\u2019t apples-to-apples, if employers are controlling costs by reducing benefits), but, even absent ObamaCare and government regulations in general, employer-sponsored healthcare isn\u2019t sustainable.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I keep harping on VoucherCare<\/a>\u00a0(as much in my comments on other blogs as on this blog), since the \u201cstatus quo\u201d will collapse one way or the other.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"