Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
Whether I pay for my employees' coverage, or I end that benefit and the state picks them up, the employees' compensation remains the same. I would certainly not pay them more unless I had to in order to attract workers. I might drop my prices to undercut my competitors who were still paying for coverage, and that would then pressure them to cut the coverage themselves, placing more people on the state program. Eventually, everyone who was paying for coverage for workers who could go on the state system would stop. We'd have slightly cheaper widgets, and a hugely expanded semi-Medicare. Widget buyers would be happy, but that seems to be a poorly targeted benefit, for no real gain except an expanded role of government, and higher taxes to pay for the program.
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Whoa, is all that something to do with that "economics" thingy that was offered at the good college across the street from my jr. college?
You are assuming perfect markets, which simply don't exist. If the state coverage were not as good as the private coverage you had offered previously, and if employees actually knew what coverage was involved (unlikely), you would likely have to pay them more to make up for the coverage they were no longer getting. Or, you'd have to keep providing coverage. Of course, employees rarely make decisions about where to work based on the type of health coverage.
Your last sentence makes no sense. You are forgetting about the non-covered people who would have coverage. You aren't taking into account that those people go get emergency care after things get really bad, and that's more expensive than getting things taken care of up front, it doesn't get paid for by the people getting the care (because they can't afford it) so other health care prices are raised to cover those costs -- think of it kind of like shoplifting, which raises retail prices, but without the criminal stuff, the people who do get the emergency care but can't afford it frequently end up with fucked-up credit, the tracking of which raises prices and the costs of which make it harder for such people to drag themselves out of poverty.
So it's more than supplying "slightly cheaper widgets," though of course at the time I made the argument really the sole outcome I was looking for was cheaper widgets. All this other stuff is just the unintended consequences.
