Health Scare

I read this from Keith Hennessey's website on The Kennedy-Dodd bill.

One of the items that caught my eye, and I have read a little about this up to now, is that of item two stating that employers will have to get insurance for their employees.

This whole mandating thing is starting to become a serious pain in the a$$. In both of my prior employment stints at other companies, healthcare was available after a short period of time, as the employer wanted to make sure I was someone they wanted as an employee as well as me wanting to work there as well. This usually was a 30-60-90 day evaluation. If you did not make it, you were let go and no time was wasted with some administrative assistant filling out paperwork to send to the insurance company, where again, some administrative person was shuffling papers. Cost savings at its finest: don't spend money when you do not have to.

At both places I worked for a period of time. The first job was an aerospace foundry for two years. I left that for the second job at a chemical engineering systems and services company, for which I remained employed, and eventually ran the group, before leaving for my own gig after ten years of great experience.

My business has two employees. I own and operate what is known as a small business. It is fun and challenging, especially in today's market and economy. I would not sacrifice it for anything else and highly recommend everyone take a stab at it.

If I have to provide healthcare to these two individuals, one of two things will happen:

1. I will have to lower their salaries to accommodate for their health care. We tend to budget a certain amount of worth to an employee. This is compensation for their time and expertise. I hire great people who are experienced, practical, somewhat autonomous, yet follow a discipline of communicating and updating responsibly. And, by the will of those who have never ran their own business ever, I am now going to be forced to provide healthcare. In order for me to manage my P&L, I will need to keep expenses at constant or reduce where applicable. Surely I do not want to reduce their salary, but if I am now providing additional compensation resulting from this retarded philosophy by Congress, something will have to give, right? Well, what do you think will give? Of course these brilliant men and women (and ?) have no idea what managing money or pretty much anything else requires, especially if it is a fixed amount.
2. If I cannot lower their salaries, due to some other quirk in this ridiculous plan, I will obviously cut one or both. Not that I want to, but if I, a small business owner have to provide insurance without sacrificing salary or other compensation, I will sacrifice the staff as required to keep my P&L in the black. Now these employees could also create their own businesses and contract to me, via quotes and invoices and nothing would be different. In fact, they may find other work and customers than little old me and do very well. If everyone were their own employer, things would be a hell of a lot different, but great institutions like AIG and GM need a lot of people to run it into the ground. Especially when there are government influences on these businesses.

Of course, I am not the only one thinking this. Many other small businesses who do not have insurance for their employees are stating the same thing to me. We all would like to provide our employees with insurance, but when you ask your employee what they would rather have, especially when they look at the numbers, they would rather have some flat compensation and find insurance on their spouses plan or take another route.

Seriously, health coverage was a carrot that many employers used to attract people to work for them. I was not attracted to health care coverage and never pursued a job because of it. Why? Because at both jobs prior to owning my own business, the health care plans and providers CHANGED. Usually every two years. Let this not be seen as a problem, this is capitalism. Each plan change was done for reasons of cost and value. It was always the will of the company to avoid incurring major upsets in the employees, such as changes in doctors, dentists, specialists, pharmacies, etc. These new providers were SELLING their wares to my employers.

Both employers also paid a portion of my coverage, just as I paid a portion of it as well. Why do I want to have someone else pick my insurance provider and pay for it with my own compensation? Does anyone like this idea? I never did and now that I have my own business, I have the freedom to “pick and choose” as I want to. This is the way it should be, however, because a lot of people have had a bad experience, or the marketing of insurance as a “bad” thing today, too costly for the average American worker, we seem to have this identification of yet another sector of the free market come under the scrutiny of those who have never done anything on there own make the decisions for the rest of us (read: Congress).

Now I do not have a problem if a company wants to provide insurance to their employees, but I would rather find a plan on my own that provides the kind of coverage that my family and I need with respect to specific areas.

My insurance has worked well for me. It is expensive and could probably go down a bit, but it has done me good. When I ripped open a finger from a drill bit and needed stitches, I spent few minutes in the emergency room waiting area. The ER head doctor himself sewed stitches as we chatted about owning your own business. The same with my regular doctor. I truly think that paying my own way does get some respect from those who want to keep your business and your health in their best interest.

Those are my thoughts on this item.

Next gripe about this bloated soon to be smoldering Democrat fiasco is with number four.

Keith Hennessey's article was listed in HotAir.com

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