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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

McDonald’s is the Next to Get Rid of Employee Healthcare

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  September 30th, 2010 at 09:35 AM  | 

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This was not an unforeseen consequence of Obamacare. This was not unknown. This was not unexpected.

It was predicted.

McDonald’s is planning to drop the healthcare coverage of 30,000 employees unless the Obama Administration waives certain rules related to coverage.

Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for “mini-med” plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans.

The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits.

While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Last week, a senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.

This presents a further dilemma. McDonald’s is a huge corporation with a lot of clout. But there are many small businesses equally affected by the same regulations who will not have the clout of a McDonald’s. How many of them will ultimately go out of business because of Obamacare?

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COMMENTS

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  • http://wadingacross.wordpress.com logus

    Don’t you know it’s all about money?! They’re not for the little guy. That’s what Obamacare proves! See! It was all a giant Democrat conspiracy to prove that businesses are bad!

    If Obamacare doesn’t get repealled, I imagine it’ll easily find itself defunded, underfunded and cut apart in chunks over the next few years.

    Hope so at least.

    Most of the workers that have such insurance plans I suspect are parents and/or management since a large portion of McDonald’s staff are always teens and college kids – typically those who don’t opt into insurance.

    Obamacare hurts the middle and lower classes. Trickledown effects of a different sort.

    What utter bozos liberals are.

  • earlgrey

    Trying to understand democrats is making me feel dumber by the day. I am just thankful I can still tie my shoes.

  • Michael Dugas

    as this is the EXACT result that the Obama Administration WANTS.
    Obama is quite happy to have 30+ thousand employees of McDonalds dependent on the government for their health care.
    And we all know that those who are dependent on the government will vote for the Nanny Sate Party that put them there.

  • erod

    I hate this law, and I feel in a matter of years the vast majority of us will be on the government’s plan. I’m not expecting to have the same health benefits my parents had, but maybe I’m wrong, maybe this will be repealed. But I’m only semi-hopeful that it will happen.

  • rdelbov

    huge decisions that our friends in DC will be making in the year or two.

    1. Yes the small business limited coverage groups like Micky D’s will be one. These plans cover a lot of younger people on the cheap. Its a step above having no coverage but as noted at $2k per year it looks a lot like being self insured. This is the heart of the individual mandate where the young and healthy opt out of coverage but now will be forced to buy in.

    2. The other huge bloc of coverage questions is university student plans. Cheap coverage for a limited time for 18-29 year olds (grad students). These plans do not offer cobra and have other little loopholes that business plans have to have. If they can’t get exceptions like McDonalds we could see millions lose this coverage.

    As noted the costs rise when folks go on the governmental insured plan but dependency is also a question.

  • izoneguy

    It would not surprise me if Michelle Obama was behind the language in the healthcare bill that would strip McDonalds employees of healthcare benefits.

  • izoneguy

    and this includes those on the left – just because you have “healthcare coverage” does not mean you will get healthcare. The law of supply & demand will really be evident in a few years unless ObamaCare is repealed 100%.

    We will see how devasting the MediCare cuts will be over the next year.

  • bk

    This is all part of the Dems grand scheme – they want to get everyone on a government plan, so by forcing other people out of the picture they’ll act shocked at the heartlessness of these greedy companies while high-fiving each other and saying this proves that ObamaCare needs to be expanded.

    It is NOT an intended consequence of a bad bill – it’s exactly the sort of thing they wanted to happen.

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    as soon as Americans working at McDonald’s find out they have to cut their hours back to qualify for Medicaid.

  • http://locomotivebreath1901.blogspot.com/ locomotivebreath1901

    “It was predicted.”

    I’ll go you one better, Mr. Erickson:

    It was premeditated.

  • http://www.plumbbobblog.com Plumb_Bob

    … are themselves the result of government meddling, and are an incredible waste of money. I sincerely doubt that any employee will be hurt by their absence, but I also doubt that such plans would exist in the first place if the government hadn;’t already mucked up the market by tromping in it.

    The plans that such low-wage employees actually need — a plan that covers absolutely nothing besides the most costly major medical disaster — is not available because of state insurance rules.

    There can be no solution to medical insurance problems without repealing at least 6 decades’ worth of government meddling.

  • http://www.redstate.com/etcartman Kenny Solomon

    As a shareholder in McDonalds common stock, I’ve got a stake in this.

    As an American, I have a bigger stake in this.

    As the son of two Americans, dad being a WWII combat veteran, with both mom and dad in a nursing home….. my family’s stake in this is unmeasurable.

    It starts with the big companies, because the complicit media will run with it……. as Iogus said above….. “Those nasty big businesses“.

    Then, it’ll be “those nasty medium businesses”.

    Soon to follow: “Those nasty typical bitter God-clinging small businesses”.

  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

    Barack Obama has betrayed the very people he santicmoniously claims to champion!

  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

    If you get sick. they want you to die quickly!!! The only thing he got wrong was the ID of the party pushing that particular solution to “bending the cost curve.” The…(expletives)!

  • johnt

    Racism is at work everywhere, pop you head out of a hole and ask about deficits, Bingo, you’re a racist
    Katherine Sibelius won’t like this, neither will H Waxman. It’s not nice to get the gods angry.
    The steel glove now begins to show itself
    And didn’t Bill Maher, between paroxysms of declaring the entire nation is stupid, ask why not wait until 2014 before judging, a quantum leap past Nancy Pelosi’s waiting period.
    You can’t fool a liberal !

  • jimmyg

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/mcdonalds-fights-back-report-drop-health-care-plan/story?id=11764596&page=2
    McDonalds is denying that they are dropping coverage.

  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-wsjs-demonization-of-obamacare-hits-pathetic-low-with-article-on-mcdonalds-dropping-coverage-2010-9

    Joe Weisenthal doesn’t technically work for the DNC, but you know how it works….

  • jackhammer

    at least towards it’s shareholders.

    It plays into the image of “big bad companies”, but it is the duty of a company to work within the laws to maximize their profit. It is also in the nature of their business to have a lot of low skilled low earning people, and most likely a lot with no so many hours.

    The same thing happens in socialist utopias in Europe. New schemes are hatched by the government to deal with the problem of the long term unemployed or something like that. They allow top up jobs, which mean jobs which have no benefits or tax deductions which people on welfare can do to supplement their welfare….well, it doesn’t take long until virtually every menial job on offer is exclusively on that basis.

    Market manipulation is very very difficult, and you write stuff into law, and you shouldn’t be surprised that lawyers and accountants jump into thoise laws and work the margins.

  • jackhammer

    I read the plans…paying $750 a year for a plan that covers a maximum of $2000 in a year with co pays, and 70% of inpatient…..that is just a waste of money.

    you are right, what needs to be available is a nice national easily internet distributable “Catastrophic” insurance, which covers not one cent of the first $3-5000, but every single cent above that. Putting $500-800 a year into that would make a lot of sense for low income earners.

  • mkozikowski

    the cost to the worker being placed in National/Socialist health care is going to be about $15000.00.

    And his service will the be same as a mini-med.

    So, given that, which truly is the most costly?

  • deano64

    this radical administration.

  • smbn

    Is everyone here defending McDonalds? Because they don’t want to pay more to provide their employees healthcare? Doesn’t that corporation make a lot a lot of money?

  • The_Gadfly

    Not because simply because you “don’t get it” but because you aren’t here to understand it either. How much money McDonald’s makes is not the question, the question is government interference in private organizations. NOBODY has the right to demand that ANY person or CORPORATION spend their money in a particular way. Period.

  • smbn

    I am interested in understanding and you put it very succinctly. I don’t agree with you but I understand what you’re saying.

    I feel like someone is always going to be in power and I prefer it to be the people we elect and unelect rather than a corporation whose bottom line has to be about money.