Thank you, Obama

Posted by Kromey at 2:51pm Dec 7 '09
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I just got off the phone with my company's owner. Turns out, he's looking at terminating the employer-sponsored health care. (He's talking to me about it because I was the de facto spokesperson for the unhappy employees (which was all of us) back in June when the company sprung the last-minute, no-one-has-a-chance-to-react reduction in our health coverage with increase in our cost.) Why is he doing this? Well, it turns out that our good buddy Obama has recently pushed a law through that requires companies to retro-actively cover 65% of COBRA coverage for former employees and their families as far back as 2008.

In other words, the company's required to provide better coverage to former employees that it currently provides to active employees (the company currently covers 50% for the employee him/herself; nothing for family)! As a result of this coming down while the economy is still in a slump and the company's still trying to recover from a huge client pulling out due to the economic downturn, the company can't afford to maintain the health insurance for current employees.

To sum up: If Obama had not lifted a finger, my employer-provided health insurance wouldn't be in harm's way, at least not yet. But because he did, I'm now in real danger of losing that coverage. Time to scramble and get coverage on my own.

Thanks, Obama!