Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Walgreens to send employees to private insurance exchange with a foreword by Michael

 Walgreen Co. is working with benefits adminstrator Aon Hewitt to offer its employees a private health insurance exchange. Walgreens will subsidize the insurance, but employees must shop among 25 plans from five providers and join those plans as individual customers.

Michael 

OK, probably no big surprise here as companies large and small are looking to bail out on providing medical care insurance for their employees. We have looked at it very closely for my company. It could be beneficial for employees who are eligible for government sponsored subsidies to help pay for their insurance. Be very careful of a catch 22 no one is talking about. If your company drops their insurance but they make a payment to the employee that helps pay for them to purchase insurance on the exchange our insurance adviser says that can and will be interpreted as a company subsidized insurance plan and the employees will no longer be eligible for government subsidies.
If a company offers any type of insurance plan the employees can go to the exchange instead but they will not be eligible for government subsidies based upon income. If your employer pays you an increase after dropping their company plan but stipulates that it is to help with purchase of insurance on the exchange you very likely will not be eligible for any subsidy based upon your income. These subsidies will come as tax credits as it has been explained to me. If, as we plan to just increase the employees pay with a monthly bonus not specified for insurance they can spend it as they like and go without insurance.
As we get closer to the deadline for those small businesses that will be under these mandates it is very obvious basically no one knows what is going to happen. So far last report was that only Blue Cross had even signed up for the NC exchange so there goes choice and competition. Hang on the ride to single payer dot.gov insurance has begun and the insurance companies know it and have made peace with making all the money they can before they become extinct.
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 Walgreen Co. has announced that it will dump traditional employer-sponsored health insurance coverage for its 180,000 employees, the Chicago Tribune is reporting. Instead, those employees will be given a set amount of money to shop for their own insurance on a private health insurance exchange run by benefits consultant Aon Hewitt.

More @ WBJ

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