Obamacare's Cadillac Tax Hits the College Campus

[4248]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other...n?ocid=U305DHP

"In 2009 President Obama gave assurances that he did not want any tax on health insurance plans he considered wasteful or too generous to affect average Americans. In one of his now famous talks broadcast on CNN, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, "one of the men who helped draft the legislation, [explains] that is not only precisely what will happen - but that was the intention of the tax."

"Politiconotes that “a mix of business groups and labor unions” are arm in arm — and up in arms — fighting to kill this tax. Unnoted in the article is that higher education also will be hit especially hard. The dramatic impact of the “Cadillac” tax on higher education has been noticed before, such as on this site (“Obamacare Hits Adjuncts Hard”) and Megan McArdle’s delicious putdown, “Whining Harvard Professors Discover Obamacare.”

"Now, as the scheduled 2018 implementation of the tax gets closer and more and more colleges begin to adjust their health plans to deal with it, awareness of the impending pain is beginning to spread. In New Jersey, four of the state’s 11 public colleges and universities have dropped student health insurance, and three of Washington State’s 6 public institutions have done so as well. Read the article for list of Collages and their changes:http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other...n?ocid=U305DHP


"In a mailing sent to “Dear Colleagues” last month, Ohio University provided a detailed explanation of the need for its changes:

"The university’s health care costs are projected to increase by as much as 8 percent per year, or $4 to $5 million annually, for the next several years. Additionally, in 2018, the ACA will begin taxing high cost Cadillac health plans where health plan costs exceed $10,200 per year for individuals or $27,500 per year for families. As currently structured, the university’s PPO health plans are on pace to exceed these levels and subject Ohio University to the Cadillac plan tax."

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The Majority of those hurt will be students and their families as they struggle to maintain insurance for the young adult students._
_________________________________

Another broken promise and hidden affect of #ObamaCare - #Hillary Clinton avoids ObamaCare issue !

[WNYresident]

I'm curious. Will this tax effect the health care packages of local government employees?

[nogods]

[URL]
The Majority of those hurt will be students and their families as they struggle to maintain insurance for the young adult students._

More BS. Colleges charge students for health insurance - it ain't free. Students take out loans to pay for that health insurance. Moreover, students are covered under their parent's health insurance until age 26.

The story is about the University as an employer looking to reduce its labor expenses.

Why didn't throw in "and will infringe on our 2A rights and help more illegal sneak across the boarder" while you are at it.

[nogods]

I'm curious. Will this tax effect the health care packages of local government employees?

Ohio University is a U.S. public research university located on a 1,850-acre (7.5 km2) campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. Ohio is the first institution of higher education chartered through an act of Congress in America, by the Northwest Ordinance in 1787; the first university in the former Northwest Territory, in 1804; and is the ninth oldest public university in the United States.[3][4][5] The Athens campus enrolls more than 26,000 students, who come from nearly every state and approximately 100 countries. Five regional campuses and e-learning programs further extend educational access and opportunity to students across southern Ohio and bring the total student population to approximately 40,000.

Ohio University will not buy $1.2 million home from donor for president

ATHENS, Ohio - Ohio University will not buy a $1.2 million home from a university donor as a residence for President Roderick McDavis, who moved out of his university-owned home because of bats.

OU will continue to pay a $4,318-a-month lease for the home, owned by donor John Wharton, but will not exercise an option to buy, university officials said Monday.

The lease/purchase agreement angered students and faculty who said the money could have been better used for scholarships, building improvements and other measures to cut costs.

[4248]

Read the article - then judge for yourself !

The alternative - is to believe Nogods version - I guess the people who wrote these articles must have lied - atleast according to Nogods. We should only believe him.

These must be lies too:

Obamacare Hits Adjuncts Hard
John Rosenberg http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2013...adjuncts_hard/

Thanks to #Obamacare, the situation of adjuncts and other “contingent faculty” has become much more precarious. “Universities are cutting back on their work hours to comply with #Obamacare,” the Daily Caller reports, in order to avoid that law’s requirement of benefits to those who work more than 30 hours a week. “Adjunct college instructors,” the Huffington Post noted last August, “are caught in purgatory as their employers, which have increasingly relied on them as a cheap source of labor, decide if they will restrict the hours the instructors are allowed to work to avoid providing them with health insurance.”

More recent data suggests that the adjuncts and other contingents are no longer in purgatory but are being rapidly transported to a much hotter location. According to a major survey of college and university human resources officers commissioned by Inside Higher Ed, conducted by Gallup and released several days ago, “48 percent of respondents say their institutions already have placed or enforced limits on adjunct faculty to avoid having to meet new federal requirements of employer-provided health insurance,” and of those institutions that have not “35 percent say they are considering doing so.”

Well, of course they are reducing adjuncts’ hours, and that’s not all they are doing. In announcing major changes to its health benefits, the University of Virginia recently explained that #Obamacare is “projected to add $7.3 million to the cost of the University health plan in 2014 alone,” and that “in future years U.Va. could face millions more in taxes” because of the “#Cadillac tax” on plans providing generous benefits. “Effective in 2018, the 40 percent tax would apply to the cost of an individual plan with average premiums per employee topping $10,200.” Since the average premium per employee in 2012 was $9,270 and “U.Va. anticipates its medical plan costs to rise by about 6.8% each year,” by 2018 it will be well above the “#Cadillac tax” threshold unless additional major changes are made.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whining Harvard Professors Discover #Obamacare : http://www.bloombergview.com/article...sors-discover-obamacare

The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.

The deepest irony is, of course, that Harvard professors helped to design #Obamacare. And #Obamacare is the reason that these changes are probably necessary.

The culprit is the "#Cadillac Tax," the hefty excise tax on high-cost plans. The purpose of that tax is to hold down health-care costs, by making it much more expensive for employers to offer the kind of gold-plated benefit plans that shield consumers from virtually all the costs of their health-care decisions.



The only thing surprising about universities’ cost-cutting response to expensive new #Obamacare requirements is that so many academics seemed shocked and surprised. Robert Conlon, a senior vice president at Sibson Consulting who works with colleges on employment and other issues, told Inside Higher Ed that “he was unsurprised that institutions were taking advantage of the “glaring” loophole provided in the federal health care law” by cutting adjunct hours, but he did not explain why he thought the 30-hour threshold for requiring benefits was a “loophole” and not an integral part of the Affordable Care Act. Does he think that “loophole” should be plugged just for academics or for all employees? Since many adjuncts are relatively young and healthy, they would seem to be ideal #Obamacare targets for forced entry into the new exchanges.

[nogods]

Read the article - then judge for yourself !

The alternative - is to believe Nogods version - I guess the people who wrote these articles must have lied - atleast according to Nogods. We should only believe him.

These must be lies too:

Obamacare Hits Adjuncts Hard
John Rosenberg http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2013...adjuncts_hard/

Thanks to #Obamacare, the situation of adjuncts and other “contingent faculty” has become much more precarious. “Universities are cutting back on their work hours to comply with #Obamacare,” the Daily Caller reports, in order to avoid that law’s requirement of benefits to those who work more than 30 hours a week. “Adjunct college instructors,” the Huffington Post noted last August, “are caught in purgatory as their employers, which have increasingly relied on them as a cheap source of labor, decide if they will restrict the hours the instructors are allowed to work to avoid providing them with health insurance.”

More recent data suggests that the adjuncts and other contingents are no longer in purgatory but are being rapidly transported to a much hotter location. According to a major survey of college and university human resources officers commissioned by Inside Higher Ed, conducted by Gallup and released several days ago, “48 percent of respondents say their institutions already have placed or enforced limits on adjunct faculty to avoid having to meet new federal requirements of employer-provided health insurance,” and of those institutions that have not “35 percent say they are considering doing so.”

Well, of course they are reducing adjuncts’ hours, and that’s not all they are doing. In announcing major changes to its health benefits, the University of Virginia recently explained that #Obamacare is “projected to add $7.3 million to the cost of the University health plan in 2014 alone,” and that “in future years U.Va. could face millions more in taxes” because of the “#Cadillac tax” on plans providing generous benefits. “Effective in 2018, the 40 percent tax would apply to the cost of an individual plan with average premiums per employee topping $10,200.” Since the average premium per employee in 2012 was $9,270 and “U.Va. anticipates its medical plan costs to rise by about 6.8% each year,” by 2018 it will be well above the “#Cadillac tax” threshold unless additional major changes are made.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whining Harvard Professors Discover #Obamacare : http://www.bloombergview.com/article...sors-discover-obamacare

The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.

The deepest irony is, of course, that Harvard professors helped to design #Obamacare. And #Obamacare is the reason that these changes are probably necessary.

The culprit is the "#Cadillac Tax," the hefty excise tax on high-cost plans. The purpose of that tax is to hold down health-care costs, by making it much more expensive for employers to offer the kind of gold-plated benefit plans that shield consumers from virtually all the costs of their health-care decisions.



The only thing surprising about universities’ cost-cutting response to expensive new #Obamacare requirements is that so many academics seemed shocked and surprised. Robert Conlon, a senior vice president at Sibson Consulting who works with colleges on employment and other issues, told Inside Higher Ed that “he was unsurprised that institutions were taking advantage of the “glaring” loophole provided in the federal health care law” by cutting adjunct hours, but he did not explain why he thought the 30-hour threshold for requiring benefits was a “loophole” and not an integral part of the Affordable Care Act. Does he think that “loophole” should be plugged just for academics or for all employees? Since many adjuncts are relatively young and healthy, they would seem to be ideal #Obamacare targets for forced entry into the new exchanges.

Did you even bother to read what you post? As I stated, none of your stories support your assertion that this will deprive students of health care - it has nothing to do with the students at the schools - it is solely a matter of labor cost.

So I guess we can either believe the completely false assertions of your lunatic mind, or read the stories you post and then explain them to you..over..over...and over again.

[WNYresident]

I'm curious. Will this tax effect the health care packages of local government employees?

[4248]

So far this is about all I can find: Anyone have more updates or links ?

Q: I work at a federal agency and am enrolled in FEHB. Does the Affordable Care Act require me to purchase health insurance on the law’s new online marketplaces, known as exchanges?

A: No, you do not have to buy coverage on the marketplace. You can stay with FEHB. But if you want to shop for a health plan on the exchange, you will not qualify for a subsidy because the federal government pays up to 75 percent of the cost of your FEHB coverage.

Q: I work on Capitol Hill. Do I have to purchase coverage through the exchanges?

A: Yes. A provision of the health law, originally authored by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, requires that, if you are a member of Congress or work on a lawmaker’s personal staff, you must obtain your health coverage through the online insurance marketplace. And, according to a recent ruling from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, whether or not you are employed in the D.C. Metro area, you must purchase coverage on the District of Columbia small business exchange.

“Given the location of Congress in the District of Columbia, OPM has determined that the D.C. SHOP (Small Business Health Options Program) … administered by the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority, is the appropriate SHOP from which members of Congress and designed congressional staff will purchase health insurance in order to receive a government contribution,” the rule states.

For the 2014 plan year, members of Congress and their designated staffs must pick from options in the DC SHOP’s “gold” level of coverage, according to OPM. The enrollment period coincides with FEHB open season, which runs from Nov. 11 to Dec. 9. Coverage will be effective Jan. 1, 2014.

The DC SHOP offers several health plans with nationwide coverage.

A member of Congress or a designated staff member could decline the contribution if they wish.

Since some Capitol Hill staffers split their time between working on a committee staff and a member’s personal staff, OPM asked lawmakers to decide by October 31 which aides are designated as personal staff.

Q: I work on a lawmaker’s personal staff but am eligible for and am considering retirement. How will the timing of my retirement affect my health insurance coverage?

A: If you meet the congressional rules for retirement and retire before Jan. 1, 2014, you will never go into the exchange. If you do go into the exchange and then retire, you will have FEHB coverage in retirement.

Q: I’ve heard about some legislative proposals that would repeal the current federal subsidy for lawmakers and other public officials. What are those proposals?

A: During the recent debate over how to end the federal government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., pushed a measure that would have required members of Congress, their staffs, the president and vice president, and political appointees to purchase coverage on the exchange without the federal government subsidy. Vitter has said he will continue to push for the amendment. And he has a separate bill that would require members of Congress to make public which staff members they have exempted from the exchanges.

[4248]

So I guess we can either believe the completely false assertions of your lunatic mind, or read the stories you post and then explain them to you..over..over...and over again.

First, thanks for all the updated links to actual facts you haven't posted -

Again - Party Boy forgets and ignores - I didn't write the articles and if he read them - his Dem Party Loyalty Denial is working over time: PROTECT DADDY OBAMA - DEFEND DEM PARTY -

As usual - you focus on a few words to blow smoke over the true issue - #Obamacare is going to affect every working person - their families - their pay checks - their taxes and their lives.

While it does force millions of Americans into the program - it also forces employers to cut programs in order to save money.

Its not just about profits - or who covers who - its about everyone in the next few years being forced to pay more for less or be taxed for not joining into #Obamacare.

You can blow all the smoke you want - there's so many "hidden" changes and rules - unless you have read the millions of pages related to its implementation - like most elected officials all the way to the #White House haven't - you know little more than what each level of society is learning each year.

I don't know any more than the average American - some Party Players like Nogods are just so intent on protecting his leaders decisions - the truth doesn't matter to people like him. Besides he's tax subsidized lawyer - so why should he care anyway ?

[nogods]

The Majority of those hurt will be students and their families as they struggle to maintain insurance for the young adult students._
_________________________________

Another broken promise and hidden affect of #ObamaCare - #Hillary Clinton avoids ObamaCare issue !

Well there's your false claim - which by the way isn't in quotes - looks like you wrote it itself.

And it is abundantly clear from your post and the articles that they have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with health insurance provided to students of the colleges. Even a caveman would have understood that from reading the articels...well...all but at least one caveman.

So go ahead...keep posting false and inane claims and we'll keep exposing your false and inane claims.

[4248]

Here is a direct quote, "In New Jersey, four of the state’s 11 public colleges and universities have dropped student health insurance, and three of Washington State’s 6 public institutions have done so as well. Read the article for list of Collages and their changes:http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other...n?ocid=U305DHP"

Yes - Oh great BS artist - my sentence you quoted didn't have quotes - mainly because unlike you - I am not nor was I trying to pretend it was anything other than my opinion.

Backed up by this quote : "In New Jersey, four of the state’s 11 public colleges and universities have dropped student health insurance, and three of Washington State’s 6 public institutions have done so as well. Read the article for list of Collages and their changes:http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other...n?ocid=U305DHP"

Is the scotch getting to your eye sight too - or are you just acting dumb again ? You cant hide from the truth Party Boy !

[nogods]

Here is a direct quote, "In New Jersey, four of the state’s 11 public colleges and universities have dropped student health insurance, and three of Washington State’s 6 public institutions have done so as well. Read the article for list of Collages and their changes:http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other...n?ocid=U305DHP"

Yes - Oh great BS artist - my sentence you quoted didn't have quotes - mainly because unlike you - I am not nor was I trying to pretend it was anything other than my opinion.

Backed up by this quote : "In New Jersey, four of the state’s 11 public colleges and universities have dropped student health insurance, and three of Washington State’s 6 public institutions have done so as well. Read the article for list of Collages and their changes:http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other...n?ocid=U305DHP"

Is the scotch getting to your eye sight too - or are you just acting dumb again ? You cant hide from the truth Party Boy !

Lol...you are the dumbest person to ever own a computer.

The quote you quoted has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the Cadillac health insurance tax. Once again, your inane false claims have been exposed:

Colleges Are Getting Out Of The Health Insurance Business

Experts are divided on whether this change will be good or bad for students. Some call it an inevitable result of health care reform and a money-saver for students since insurance in the marketplace is usually cheaper than the college plans. Others worry that more students will go without health insurance since their premiums won't be folded into the lump sum they pay for school, and they say college health plans offer more coverage for the money than other options.

The main driver of colleges getting out of the insurance business is a provision in the Affordable Care Act that prevents students from using premium tax subsidies to purchase insurance from their college or university, according to Steven M. Bloom, director of federal relations for the American Council on Education, a Washington, D.C., group representing the presidents of U.S. colleges and universities.

Add to that the provision that allows young people to stay on their parent's health insurance plans until age 26, plus the expansion of Medicaid in some states and the rising cost of student insurance. The result is cheaper health insurance available for students off campus.

[Jeff]

I have what I would call a pretty good health plan. I pay $1550 a month for a Family of 5. Thats $8,900 dollars less than the family limit. Also the tax isn't on the entire plan. Its on every dollar after the limit.

I'm not arguing for the tax, but it is a contribution received and this will probably affect a small number of people who quite frankly should be able to afford it.