-By Warner Todd Huston
Big Labor has, for the most part, fallen all over itself to help its patron President get his Obamacare policies passed in Congress spending millions to do so. If Obamacare should pass many millions will lose their healthcare and will be forced into government healthcare. According to the CBO at least 10 million will lose their insurance in short order. The CBO is likely lowballing the number, too.
That means many people that now have insurance through their employers will lose it and, thereby, lose some of their compensation and that brings up a major point that few people are talking about. I’ve mentioned it offhandedly in the past, but reader D. Harrison brought the issue before me in a recent email and I thought we should make it a point here.
Mr. Harrison wrote:
Why is no one ever talking about compensation for employees whose employers pull the plug on healthcare benefits plans? If I were taking home an annual salary of $80,000 and had a “Cadillac” healthcare plan worth, say, $20,000, then when my employer drops all healthcare benefits (as he surely will when the “public ‘option'” becomes the default), should I not be compensated by being given $100,000 for my annual wage?
If not, then not only does my overall compensation for my labor drop, but in addition, I will have to pay higher taxes to cover my “free” healthcare. In the end, I get hit with a double-whammy financially … and a triple whammy when you figure in the fact that healthcare will become less available (doctor shortages, increased waiting times, and denials of procedures and medications)!
Well, of course the answer to Mr. Harrison’s question is a basic “no.” Employees will not be re-compensated should their employers dump their healthcare plans forcing employees on the government plan.
No employer is going to cancel a healthcare plan and then give their employees a raise in hourly pay rates. It just isn’t going to happen. Once an employer dumps a healthcare plan and employees lose that as part of their employment compensation no other compensation will be offered it its stead.
That means that Obama will be causing employees all across the country to lose money and lose benefits, not to see them returned… ever.
Then we add the rise in taxes, as Mr. Harrison notes, and that’ll mean that Obama will be responsible for bringing our lifestyles crashing down. A vote for Obamacare means to cut your own pay and raise your own taxes, folks. It’s just that simple.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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