Obama Land

Well, yes and no.

Just starting to implement this at work, and by “implement,” I mean: notify my employees of the establishment of the health insurance exchanges on a statewide and federal level. Still not an expert on Obamacare (no one really is at this stage), but I got real good support from some excellent brokers we deal with who are helping us walk through this potential fiasco step by step.

My gut tells me it won’t be as bad as some say, but it won’t be as good as others insist. Health insurance rates won’t magically plummet 50 percent. But I don’t think it will crash the economy. It’ll be a drag, sure. I think instead of the typical 5 to 8 percent annual increases in premiums my industry has experienced over the past ten years we’ll see twice that amount. 15 percent will be the norm. Passed on, as always, to the consumer, which is you and I, the employees.

How do I know it will be a drag on the economy? Partly from experience. We eliminated three of the lowest level positions (they somehow pull us down in our “affordability” rankings; take my word for it). That’s three people out of work – and those three were a pair of college kids and a retiree. Second, we’re beginning to enforce the “no-part-timers-over-twenty-eight-hours-a-week” rule. That too hurts us in the governmental ranking of our company’s health care. And when I say it hurts us, I mean it hurts you, if you’re a part-time employee looking to make some extra dough to save, pay bills, or, gasp! stimulate the economy.

It’s a crazy, upside down world we’re living in. Obama’s America. Obama Land.