My Health Care Plan

[BillP]

You don’t seem to understand insurance. What you describe above is what happens when insurance DOESN’T cover contraception or sterilization. THEN the employee is paying for the contraceptive.

No, you don’t understand business. When I hire an employee, I budget a total amount for his or her compensation. That total amount is the portion of the production (tangible or intangible) generated (directly or indirectly) BY THE EMPLOYEE. The entire amount of the compensation package (which includes not only wages, but benefits and taxes) is taken from the extra production that results from the labor of the employee. It is HIS, period. The fact that the employer spends it on the employees behalf to obtain goods and or services that will be used by the employee doesn’t make it the EMPLOYER’S!

When employers are forced to cover these things, the outcome is rather different. Insurance is fundamentally based on the idea that the group makes the same payment so that individuals aren’t overwhelmed by isolated costs AND the group gets better bargaining power. When the insurance plan has to pay for Betty’s tubal ligation, the funds for that don’t come out of Betty’s paycheck, they come out of Betty, Lisa, Lucy and the checks of the other 50 employees in the pool. All 53 of them share the cost of Betty’s tubal. It is inherently unfair to make all those others pay for an elective procedure that simply isn’t medically necessary. It is even WORSE when all those others are being forced to pay for procedures and drugs that they find morally objectionable.

Your understanding of insurance is faulty as well because it isn’t parimutuel it is fixed odds. That is to say the money paid out has no direct connection to the money paid in. It is essentially a wager. The employees are paying a fixed amount betting that they WILL get sick enough for their actual health costs to exceed their premium. The insurance company is accepting the wager and betting that enough people won’t get sick enough to collectively exceed the premium. Here’s evidence: Lets say the my employer engages XYZ insurance company to write health cover for 100 employees @ $100 per. Total cost = $10,000. Now lets say that miraculously, no one got sick and made a claim for the entire year. NO ONE GETS ANY MONEY BACK!

Conversely, same facts, but one employee gets cancer and costs $1,000,000 to treat. NO ONE PAYS ANY MORE. (Yes, premiums may well go up, but only for the following year as the insurer re-evaluates his bet).

A reasonable compromise that I haven’t heard suggested yet would be to require all insurers to include these services and drugs in the negotiated pricing schemes that insurance companies work out with providers, but not require the pool to actually fund any of the patient’s resulting costs. The insured person still gets the benefit of the (often drastic) insurance company negotiated discounts, but the other employees aren’t actually forced to PAY for any portion of those objectionable drugs/services.

I could live with that. but I’d prefer that the “opt-out” be at the level of the individual employee. My employer has no business dictating which medical services I should have access to because of HIS particular religious beliefs. How about going to work for a Christian Scientist who only provides insurance that accesses “mind physicians”? Or working for Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse to provide access to blood transfusions?

 

[manualman]

1. No, you don’t understand business. When I hire an employee, I budget a total amount for his or her compensation. That total amount is the portion of the production (tangible or intangible) generated (directly or indirectly) BY THE EMPLOYEE. The entire amount of the compensation package (which includes not only wages, but benefits and taxes) is taken from the extra production that results from the labor of the employee. It is HIS, period. The fact that the employer spends it on the employees behalf to obtain goods and or services that will be used by the employee doesn’t make it the EMPLOYER’S!
2. Your understanding of insurance is faulty as well because it isn’t parimutuel it is fixed odds. That is to say the money paid out has no direct connection to the money paid in. It is essentially a wager. The employees are paying a fixed amount betting that they WILL get sick enough for their actual health costs to exceed their premium. The insurance company is accepting the wager and betting that enough people won’t get sick enough to collectively exceed the premium. Here’s evidence: Lets say the my employer engages XYZ insurance company to write health cover for 100 employees @ $100 per. Total cost = $10,000. Now lets say that miraculously, no one got sick and made a claim for the entire year. NO ONE GETS ANY MONEY BACK!

Conversely, same facts, but one employee gets cancer and costs $1,000,000 to treat. NO ONE PAYS ANY MORE. (Yes, premiums may well go up, but only for the following year as the insurer re-evaluates his bet).

1. I understand perfectly well. You are the one arguing that additional benefits can be collected by an employee without increasing the cost contributed by the employer. It defies imagination that someone in business could assert that the world works that way. Insurance polices that cover abortion, sterilization and contraception cost more than those that don’t. The costs are NOT fixed, they are based on actuarial analysis of the services offered.
2. Health insurance generally comes in two flavors: direct coverage from a supplier company and self-insurance administered by one of the big companies with a reinsurance policy to cover bad years. Your assertion fails on either approach. In the first approach, see response #1 above. The insurance company employs rather a lot of actuaries who calculate the probable expense of the coverage based on the benefits it provides. You’re dreaming if you imagine that a policy that covers abortions, sterilization and contraception costs the same as one that doesn’t. In the second (more common) approach you are even more wrong. The employer collects premiums from employee paychecks, often kicks in a certain amount per employee and places it in a pool account. The premiums are designed to be large enough so that in an average year the premium pool is large enough to pay all the claims. The company has a reinsurance policy for those years when claims exceed the pool. In the miracle case of a year in which nobody makes a claim (fantasy), the pool rolls over into the next year and the premium can be reduced and the reinsurance costs go down. In the (universally more common) case where claims exceed the pool, the reinsurer most likely will raise the reinsurance cost or ask that the employer raise premiums (or both). So adding these extra benefits drains the pool faster which means premiums are going to go up.

These things are NOT part of basic health care. They are elective options that employers and fellow employees should not be forced to help others pay for. This system has been cleverly designed to make people who don’t want them have to pay for those who do. That’s all it is. There are no free lunches.

 

[BillP]

1. I understand perfectly well. You are the one arguing that additional benefits can be collected by an employee without increasing the cost contributed by the employer.

Please pay attention to my actual argument. IT AIN’T THE EMPLOYERS MONEY.

It is money earned by the EMPLOYEE that the EMPLOYER is spending on his behalf.

The costs are NOT fixed, they are based on actuarial analysis of the services offered.

The premiums are indeed FIXED. The only variable costs are those born by the insurer. Sheesh!!

1. Health insurance generally comes in two flavors: direct coverage from a supplier company and self-insurance administered by one of the big companies with a reinsurance policy to cover bad years. Your assertion fails on either approach. In the first approach, see response #1 above.

I refer my right honorable friend to the answer I made some moments ago.

The insurance company employs rather a lot of actuaries who calculate the probable expense of the coverage based on the benefits it provides.

EXACTLY! The insurance company is the one paying the benefits!! Now you’ve got it!

In the second (more common) approach you are even more wrong. The employer collects premiums from employee paychecks, often kicks in a certain amount per employee and places it in a pool account. The premiums are designed to be large enough so that in an average year the premium pool is large enough to pay all the claims. The company has a reinsurance policy for those years when claims exceed the pool. In the miracle case of a year in which nobody makes a claim (fantasy), the pool rolls over into the next year and the premium can be reduced and the reinsurance costs go down. In the (universally more common) case where claims exceed the pool, the reinsurer most likely will raise the reinsurance cost or ask that the employer raise premiums (or both). So adding these extra benefits drains the pool faster which means premiums are going to go up…

This is true, but irrelevent. We’re talking about specific Catholic institutions and Dioceses here NONE of which (to my knowledge) self insure for health coverage. It is a strawman.

These things are NOT part of basic health care. They are elective options that employers and fellow employees should not be forced to help others pay for. This system has been cleverly designed to make people who don’t want them have to pay for those who do. That’s all it is. There are no free lunches.

Neither YOU nor the USCCB are competent to define “basic health care”.

 

[manualman]

The premiums are indeed FIXED. The only variable costs are those born by the insurer. Sheesh!!
…

This is true, but irrelevent. We’re talking about specific Catholic institutions and Dioceses here NONE of which (to my knowledge) self insure for health coverage. It is a strawman.

Neither YOU nor the USCCB are competent to define “basic health care”.

1. They are fixed based on the serices covered. Policies that cover these issues cost more than those that don’t. That’s why actuaries exist. They don’t just play Soduku all day… Sheesh indeed.
2. MOST catholic dioceses are self insured. The kind in which one of the big players issues the cards, but the risk pool is segregated and managed at the diocesan level. Just because the employee card says ‘Humana’ doesn’t mean they aren’t self-insured! Self insurance becomes financially smart at about the 300 employee level (give or take). Diocesan plans cover parish employees, school employees and many times the catholic charities employees. Those numbers add up fast.
3. We’re at least as qualified as Obama or Sebelius is. More, in fact, since the USCCB doesn’t issue opinions on such matters without the explicit (name removed by moderator)ut of some of the finest minds in the medical field, such as those at the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

You may win the struggle to make us catholics pay for the sterilizations and pills others want, but we won’t let it happen without loudly pointing out the tyranny.

 

[runningdude]

Please pay attention to my actual argument. IT AIN’T THE EMPLOYERS MONEY.

It is money earned by the EMPLOYEE that the EMPLOYER is spending on his behalf.

The church teaches that contraception is fundamentally immoral. It is immoral to use. It is immoral to purchase. It is immoral to sell.

It is immoral for Catholics to use. It is immoral for Protestants use. It is immoral for non-Christians to use. It is immoral for any human being to practice contraception according to Catholic teaching.

The government has absolutely no business forcing the Catholic Church or any affiliated institution to remotely participate in purchasing for facilitating the purchase of contraception. This is true even if the contraceptive coverage is technically being paid for by the employee as you argue. If the employee were to purchase contraception with his “non-insurance” compensation, then that would be his or her own business. According to the Church, it would be his or her own moral failing, but when the church is forced is forced to participate then the it would share in the moral failing.

The government arguably has no business forcing any business to participate in contraception, but for now we need to protect the church herself from scandal caused by this unjust mandate.

 

[BillP]

Why are you ignoring the FACT that the employers are “paying” for he insurance with the EMPLOYEE’S EARNINGS??

What other stipulations should employers be able to place on how employees spend their wages?

What about Blood Transfusions? Should Catholics who work for Jehovah’s Witnesses have to accept “insurance” that doesn’t cover those?

What if Pastafarians (those people who worship the “flying spaghetti monster”) claim that their religion prohibits chemotherapy, should Methodists who work for those people just die of Cancer? or pay out of pocket?

If the Church (which is exempt by the way!!) doesn’t want affiliated schools and hospitals to purchase health insurance that includes access to these products then pay the $750 tax and be done with it (Render unto Caesar…where have I heard that before??)

 

[manualman]

Nope. Your examples are apples and oranges. Again. Clearly you’d like them to be apples to apples, but they aren’t. It does not take an advanced philosophy or medicine degree to see the difference between requiring insurance to cover critical care and life saving treatments and a requirement to cover what is (almost always) a convenience, lifestyle and preference issue.

Nobody is stopping these employees from using their wages to purchase supplemental coverage and nobody forces them to work for a catholic employer. They have the liberty to take their skills elsewhere. Employers and their fellow employees should have the liberty to refuse to shoulder care they object to that is not basic to the life saving care or ordinary maintenance of the human body in proper condition.

This isn’t rendering to Caeser what is Caeser’s, this is a thinly disguised conscience tax. They want everybody to share equally in a non-critical medical technology sector that some object to. That quite simply translates into making those the don’t believe in it reduce the price for those who do by paying an equal share.

I know everybody wants a free lunch, but it doesn’t exist. Somebody pays. Somebody always pays.

 

[runningdude]

Why are you ignoring the FACT that the employers are “paying” for he insurance with the EMPLOYEE’S EARNINGS??

What other stipulations should employers be able to place on how employees spend their wages?

What about Blood Transfusions? Should Catholics who work for Jehovah’s Witnesses have to accept “insurance” that doesn’t cover those?

What if Pastafarians (those people who worship the “flying spaghetti monster”) claim that their religion prohibits chemotherapy, should Methodists who work for those people just die of Cancer? or pay out of pocket?

If the Church (which is exempt by the way!!) doesn’t want affiliated schools and hospitals to purchase health insurance that includes access to these products then pay the $750 tax and be done with it (Render unto Caesar…where have I heard that before??)

We can explore all the possibilities ad absurdum, but I refuse. It is up to the Seventh Day Adventists to defend their beliefs, and I won’t even touch the hypothetical “Pastafarians”.

By purchasing the insurance covering contraception, even using its employee’s money, the organization is objectively sinning according to Catholic teaching. This is true regardless of church affiliation, but for especially for organizations that strive to remain faithful to church teaching.

It is simply wrong to mandate that they violate their consciences.