l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 UPS to End Health Benefits for Some Working Spouses of Employees
Company Says Move Is Prompted in Part by Federal Health Overhaul.
By TIMOTHY W. MARTIN
, BETSY MORRIS
and SCOTT THURM
CONNECT
United Parcel Service Inc. UPS +0.99% plans to cut off health benefits to
working spouses of thousands of employees starting in 2014, a move it said
is prompted in part by higher costs related to the federal health overhaul.
The Atlanta-based package delivery giant said in an internal memo to
employees last month that rising costs for coverage of chronic and other
health conditions, "combined with the costs associated with the Affordable
Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same
level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost."
The change will affect about 15,000 spouses, UPS said—slightly fewer than
half of the 33,000 spouses who are covered today under its health plan for
nonunionized workers.
United Parcel Service plans to cut off health benefits to working spouses of
thousands of employees starting in 2014, a move, it said, is prompted in
part by higher costs related to the federal health overhaul. Timothy Martin
joins the News Hub. Photo: Getty Images.
.
It applies to working spouses who can get health-care coverage through their
own employers, the company said. The change doesn't apply, however, to
spouses who can't get their own coverage, or the spouses of unionized
employees, who make up the bulk of the company's workforce.
About 250,000 of UPS's 322,000 U.S. employees belong to unions, the biggest
of which is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. That could create an
awkward dichotomy inside the company between nonunion employees who no
longer have the choice to insure working spouses through the UPS plan, and
union members who will continue to have the choice under their union
contracts.
A UPS spokesman said the company made the change in an effort to maintain
premiums at or below current levels for a significant number of employees,
even though the company's health-care costs have nearly doubled in the past
eight years.
No UPS employee, dependent or nonworking spouse is losing coverage, he said,
and any spouse who won't be eligible for coverage through another employer
will still be able to get UPS coverage.
Denying health coverage to working spouses who are eligible for health
insurance through their own employers is a rare practice, though it is
growing. About 6% of companies with more than 500 workers have excluded
spouses who could get coverage elsewhere, up from 3% in 2008, according to a
2012 survey conducted by Mercer, a consulting unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos.
Ozburn-Hessey Logistics LLC, a Brentwood, Tenn., third-party logistics
provider, two years ago excluded from its health plans working spouses who
are able to get health-care coverage through their own employer, said Hoyt
Fitzsimmons, executive vice president of human resources.
Mr. Fitzsimmons said Ozburn-Hessey made the change to save money. He said
the company, which has about 6,000 employees, pays roughly 70% of the cost
of its employees' health-insurance premiums, both for employees and any
dependents.
"People didn't like it," he said. "But it wasn't like you were pushing them
out where they had nowhere to go" for insurance.
UPS said in its memo that it expects an 11.25% increase in health-coverage
costs in 2014 over 2013, far above its normal 6% to 7% increase in annual
costs for coverage for nonunion employees.
That is also far above the 4% increase this year in the cost of a family
plan, according to an annual poll of employers conducted by the Kaiser
Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, a nonprofit
affiliated with the American Hospital Association.
Under the individual mandate of the health law, most people must obtain
health insurance starting in 2014, or pay a fine.
The company's cost of compensation and benefits was $33.1 billion in 2012.
The company's revenue last year was $54 billion. UPS provides both pension
and postretirement medical benefits to its retirees.
The Treasury Department in July said it would delay for a year penalties
that could be charged to employers with 50 or more people for not providing
adequate health insurance. UPS, in its explanation to employees, said the
delays "do not impact the individual mandate coverage requirements."
UPS said its change "is consistent with the way many large employers are
responding to the costs associated with the Health Care Reform legislation."
It said that 35% of companies whose health coverage it has analyzed plan
also to exclude working spouses who can get coverage from their own
employers next year.
"Since the Affordable Care Act became law, health-care costs have been
slowing and premiums are increasing by the lowest rates in years," said
Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
Removing spouses from health plans is one obvious solution for companies
that are facing higher health-care costs and new requirements under the
health law, said Julie Stich, director of research at the International
Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, a nonprofit research firm that focuses
on employee benefits and compensation. "This is something the new health
law doesn't require you to provide—coverage to spouses," Ms. Stich said. "
Employers are really taking a harder look at costs, and things they may have
never considered before, they are now."
Some companies, especially larger ones, have long instituted a surcharge
above the cost of a spouse's coverage, typically about $100 a month, for
having that spouse covered under an individual's health plan when other
options exist.
Some 12% of companies with 500 to 4,999 employees impose a surcharge,
according to the Mercer report.
Health insurance represents about 7.8% of the total compensation for a
private-sector employee, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But
health costs have grown significantly over the past decade.
One difficulty about culling working spouses from employer health plans is
verifying who is eligible for coverage elsewhere, and who isn't. UPS said it
will ask employees about their spouse's eligibility during annual
enrollment. The penalty for providing false information—concealing the
spouse's ability to get insurance elsewhere—would be a "violation of UPS's
code of ethics," subject to discipline, the loss of health-care coverage and
potentially termination of employment, UPS said. "You would be required to
repay all claims paid for your wife's medical expenses—at the very least,"
UPS said.
A former UPS official said the move was part of UPS's efficiency and cost-
cutting rather than any response to business conditions. As soon as the law
was enacted, the company started an intensive review of what it might mean
from an expense standpoint, the official said. "This is classic UPS, in
terms of examining every part of every bit of the operations to see how to
improve the bottom line," the official said.
UPS has said previously that costs related to the new health law were adding
up. In March, Mike Jones, the company's vice president of investor
relations, said a health-law provision requiring children to be allowed to
remain on their parents' health insurance until they turn 26 would add about
$60 million in expenses this year.
In its most recent quarterly filing, UPS said its health and welfare costs
rose $49 million in the first six months of the company's fiscal 2013,
compared with a year earlier, "largely due to higher medical claims and the
impact of several provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act," according to the filing on Aug. 2.
The change was initially reported by Kaiser Health News and USA Today. | p****x
发帖数: 1376 | 2 左逼们怎么不站出来自愿cut福利造福穷人呢
【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: UPS to End Health Benefits for Some Working Spouses of Employees
: Company Says Move Is Prompted in Part by Federal Health Overhaul.
: By TIMOTHY W. MARTIN
: , BETSY MORRIS
: and SCOTT THURM
: CONNECT
: United Parcel Service Inc. UPS +0.99% plans to cut off health benefits to
: working spouses of thousands of employees starting in 2014, a move it said
: is prompted in part by higher costs related to the federal health overhaul.
: The Atlanta-based package delivery giant said in an internal memo to
| Q****r
发帖数: 7340 | 3 因为左逼都是吃福利的
包括那些非营利的组织等，只要钱来自于federal，都是吃福利的
【在 p****x 的大作中提到】
: 左逼们怎么不站出来自愿cut福利造福穷人呢
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