<story><title>Whole Foods Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k Employees</title><url>http://www.grubstreet.com/2019/09/whole-foods-cuts-health-care-part-time-employees.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>briandear</author><text>As an American voter, I definitely don’t want this. Health services, like any economic good, are scarce. I’d rather have rationing through the market then rationing via government (and yes, there has to be rationing; it’s not an unlimited good.) Maybe some poor don’t get the best care quickly, but under a government system, everyone is equally limited in their access to care (i.e. waiting lists.) Someone who provides significant value to society waits in line behind a person who doesn’t provide much value — that isn’t good for society. It’s unsaid because it’s incendiary, but all people in society aren’t equally important to that society: an electrical engineer is more useful than an unemployed cashier. With price-based rationing, those that generate more value have easier access to scarce care resources than those who generate less value. It’s logical, but politically tough because those that generate little value outnumber those that produce high value — and those low value people vote.</text></item><item><author>magduf</author><text>&amp;gt;but I think we as a nation (US) can do better.&lt;p&gt;No, we can&amp;#x27;t.  If we could, we would.  Things are like this because we want them to be like this: it&amp;#x27;s reflected in how we vote.  We&amp;#x27;ve had candidates pushing for &amp;quot;Medicare for all&amp;quot;, universal healthcare, etc., and who gets elected?  The candidates promising to go the other direction.  Clearly, American society and its voters do not want this.</text></item><item><author>wonderwonder</author><text>I agree. My wife&amp;#x27;s company offers better insurance than mine so I had always been on hers and declined the insurance offered by my company. Her company just implemented a policy stating that if the spouse is eligible for insurance through their own employer there would be a $200 per month surcharge for them electing to use her companies. I understand where her company is coming from but I think we as a nation (US) can do better.</text></item><item><author>tyingq</author><text>If you have a family, my rough experience is that a good, medium deductible, decent percentage coverage  healthcare plan is about $400-500&amp;#x2F;month if it&amp;#x27;s employer subsidized.  But anywhere from $1300 to $2k+&amp;#x2F;month if it isn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a pretty terrible market out there if you don&amp;#x27;t have an employer subsidizing it and using their size for negotiation leverage.</text></item><item><author>wonderwonder</author><text>&amp;#x27;As for the affected employees, they will be provided “with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” the representative added&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;If those resources are not money, then the employee is really out of luck as they likely will not be able to afford whatever those alternatives are. In addition, there is no way you can take a bunch of people that work 20 hours per week and let them work 30, no need for that many scheduled hours, just fancy corporate communications.&lt;p&gt;Amazon has the right to do whatever they want to increase Shareholder value; however, shareholder value is the root of the modern trend of devaluing people and treating them as line items in an expense report. Many of these people likely have this job primarily for the health insurance it provides.&lt;p&gt;I think it is time for the US to switch to a universal healthcare system. Removing the responsibility of corporations to manage health care would free up a large amount of resources they could invest in expansions, wage increases (likely c-suite bonuses). In addition it would allow individuals, especially working parents to more freely make employment decisions and find careers that are both financially but also emotionally rewarding. I think it would have a major impact on the working structure of this country. Not to mention it would allow people to actually go to the doctor when they need to.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wonderwonder</author><text>In reality, the uninsured avoid going to the doctor until its an emergency and then they go the the ER and rack up tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills for a problem that if treated proactively by an initial doctor visit could have been resolved with a $15 bottle of antibiotics or something similar.&lt;p&gt;The poor person obviously cannot afford that bill so the provider eats it and the result is increasing costs for everyone else. So unless the solution is just to let the poor and their children die, providing everyone with access to health care would probably be a net benefit. Not to mention universal health care would provide for incredible bargaining power meaning drugs such as insulin would not cost an individual hundreds of dollars a month.&lt;p&gt;Everyone with new health insurance is not going to go all at once, I doubt there will be any significant increase in wait time to see a doctor. Finally, people are not units of exchange, they are people and poor or rich they deserve at least a shot at a decent life for them and their family and universal health care goes a long way towards providing that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Whole Foods Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k Employees</title><url>http://www.grubstreet.com/2019/09/whole-foods-cuts-health-care-part-time-employees.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>briandear</author><text>As an American voter, I definitely don’t want this. Health services, like any economic good, are scarce. I’d rather have rationing through the market then rationing via government (and yes, there has to be rationing; it’s not an unlimited good.) Maybe some poor don’t get the best care quickly, but under a government system, everyone is equally limited in their access to care (i.e. waiting lists.) Someone who provides significant value to society waits in line behind a person who doesn’t provide much value — that isn’t good for society. It’s unsaid because it’s incendiary, but all people in society aren’t equally important to that society: an electrical engineer is more useful than an unemployed cashier. With price-based rationing, those that generate more value have easier access to scarce care resources than those who generate less value. It’s logical, but politically tough because those that generate little value outnumber those that produce high value — and those low value people vote.</text></item><item><author>magduf</author><text>&amp;gt;but I think we as a nation (US) can do better.&lt;p&gt;No, we can&amp;#x27;t.  If we could, we would.  Things are like this because we want them to be like this: it&amp;#x27;s reflected in how we vote.  We&amp;#x27;ve had candidates pushing for &amp;quot;Medicare for all&amp;quot;, universal healthcare, etc., and who gets elected?  The candidates promising to go the other direction.  Clearly, American society and its voters do not want this.</text></item><item><author>wonderwonder</author><text>I agree. My wife&amp;#x27;s company offers better insurance than mine so I had always been on hers and declined the insurance offered by my company. Her company just implemented a policy stating that if the spouse is eligible for insurance through their own employer there would be a $200 per month surcharge for them electing to use her companies. I understand where her company is coming from but I think we as a nation (US) can do better.</text></item><item><author>tyingq</author><text>If you have a family, my rough experience is that a good, medium deductible, decent percentage coverage  healthcare plan is about $400-500&amp;#x2F;month if it&amp;#x27;s employer subsidized.  But anywhere from $1300 to $2k+&amp;#x2F;month if it isn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a pretty terrible market out there if you don&amp;#x27;t have an employer subsidizing it and using their size for negotiation leverage.</text></item><item><author>wonderwonder</author><text>&amp;#x27;As for the affected employees, they will be provided “with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” the representative added&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;If those resources are not money, then the employee is really out of luck as they likely will not be able to afford whatever those alternatives are. In addition, there is no way you can take a bunch of people that work 20 hours per week and let them work 30, no need for that many scheduled hours, just fancy corporate communications.&lt;p&gt;Amazon has the right to do whatever they want to increase Shareholder value; however, shareholder value is the root of the modern trend of devaluing people and treating them as line items in an expense report. Many of these people likely have this job primarily for the health insurance it provides.&lt;p&gt;I think it is time for the US to switch to a universal healthcare system. Removing the responsibility of corporations to manage health care would free up a large amount of resources they could invest in expansions, wage increases (likely c-suite bonuses). In addition it would allow individuals, especially working parents to more freely make employment decisions and find careers that are both financially but also emotionally rewarding. I think it would have a major impact on the working structure of this country. Not to mention it would allow people to actually go to the doctor when they need to.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SketchySeaBeast</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s only logical if the only value you put on people is someone&amp;#x27;s ability to pay for things, and assume that that is somehow linked to their ability to &amp;quot;produce&amp;quot; for the betterment of society.  The argument really falls down at the extremes - is Jeff Bezos really worth millions of times more to society than one of his workers? Does being born rich automatically make you more valuable?</text></comment>