United, Maybe We’ll Stand: UPS and University of Virginia: I agree!

Unfortunately, it seems that the only way we can truly begin to restore “values” above “value” is by expanding the impact on citizens, reuniting what I believe remains the divisions and differences cultivated and exploited by those with strength in the US that have resulted in one of the most “valueless” times I can recall in my lifetime in the US.

For instance, when was the last time any of the history-expert politicians quoted “The Liberty Song,” from Revolutionary times (John Dickinson) proclaiming “United we stand. Divided we fall.” Ever since then, and today in healthcare it’s more been about every man for himself. The only time you hear mention of an idea of uniting is when a politician wants to use us as tools to promote their own particular view.

Group insurance was powered by the idea of united we stand, groups of individuals offering the value of their premiums and their members as customers to providers in exchange for a better plan from an insurance company eager to capture that business.

The erosion of this value has brought many non-governmental, non-union Americans to where we are, turning on each other and leaving insurance companies with the power to dictate what individuals get for their money in the individual market. Why should you pay for your neighbor’s bad health? Yeah, how’s that working out?

So, what’s wrong with the University of Virginia and UPS promises that insurance for spouses of employees will no longer be available if the spouse has access to other health insurance, eg through his or her own job?

After all, we’ve become more comfortable with being mean. Companies used to try to disguise policies that screwed workers in order to save a buck. There was a time when we as a people would be embarrassed to assert and have our politicians run on platforms claiming that reducing the availability of food stamps and Medicare for older citizens who have paid in their whole lives were the best “solution” for managing the Federal budget.

Back to UVA and UPS. Here’s who’s affected. Married individuals where both spouses are employed and both spouses have the option of purchasing employer-sponsored health insurance. These are households where both spouses are working and both have the option for employer-sponsored healthcare.

This is significant since the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded that in July 2013, the number of INVOLUNTARY PART-TIME WORKERS, those whose “…hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a job,” remained steady at 8.2 million people.

The number of part time workers is not part of the Bureau of Labor Statistics breakdown of unemployment where the category is “At least one family member employed” and has that number of total families in 2012 as 80 percent (bls.gov “Employment and unemployment in families by race and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, 2011-2012 annual averages,” the first line for total population.)

We don’t know how many of those part time workers have or will have the option to purchase health care from their employers, thereby becoming ineligible for health insurance under their spouse’s plan if their spouse works for UPS or UVA.

These proposed provisions do not leave spouses without insurance, they prevent spouses with other options from choosing which insurance coverage they want, their own or their spouse’s, and in all likelihood will prevent them from being able to choose both insurance coverages, where the UPS or UVA employee covers the spouse and the spouse purchases health insurance from their own company leaving next to no health expenses uncovered.

It’s a “Welcome to the real world” moment for those married couples who have enjoyed a) employment for both b)enjoyed their choice of health insurance coverage for both c) enjoyed the option of having two affordable insurance coverages for both, husband carrying wife on his plan and vice versa.

Under the proposal, these families still won’t be suffering from unemployment, under-insurance, nor even a single insurance coverage since conceivably the non-UPS and UVA worker could still carry the UPS and UVA worker meaning that worker would have two coverages. The proposal also doesn’t cover dependents meaning that children could still have either or both coverages from their parents, still superior to the usual American experience.

In the world as it is today, where penny-pinching is used to justify sending our jobs offshore, failing to crackdown on illegal employees because they’re cheaper for employers, hiring those in other countries by outsourcing rather than hiring American, where doctors threaten not to take on Medicare patients because they’re not making enough money off them, and politicians argue that the ONLY place to save money is by raiding and cannibalizing Medicare, there is no reason why UPS, or University of Virginia should NOT boldly announce that they’re changing their health insurance offering to employees.

Today it’s acceptable, no longer embarrassing for companies to screw their employees in the name of money. For instance, White Castle’s proud announcement that it’s going to hire only part-time workers (search July 2013 or August 2013 and White Castle to hire part time workers to find many articles on the subject).

This is where we are. We’re a bunch of nasty people who like to use euphemisms to soften the obvious blow we take day after day to anything resembling traditional “values” over modern ideas of “value.”

Obamacare will force us to face the fact that we’ve been kidding ourselves, using euphemisms, myths and lies to justify what this country is all about, everyone out for themselves in making a buck, and pursuing their own political, monetary or power agenda.

There is nothing those in power are embarrassed to talk about when it comes to saving money by screwing citizens whether it’s Republicans defending their offshore accounts, or outsourcing American jobs, or it’s Democrats achieving their goals of getting people insured by putting the burden on parents to provide health insurance for their young adult children unable to obtain jobs, apparently because they’ve been inadequately educated in our American schools.

Obamacare is significant because it is helping us understand that we made a mistake turning on one another and thinking that as individuals we would exert more influence in the insurance market. Instead of Americans sticking together, the fat, the smoking, the ones with heart disease, the obese, the diabetic, the healthy, we allowed promises of “savings” to turn us against each other leaving insurance companies and business as the united voices in healthcare.

What was it that Martin Niemoller warned? “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.”