The End of Our Company-Paid Health Insurance

For 15 years, I have taken satisfaction in paying the total cost of health insurance for every complete-time Palisades Hudson worker who desired it. This month marks the last time I will try this.

Beginning in October, our 20 employees will make their personal choices and their very own arrangements regarding health coverage. They can stay on our employer’s plan. However, they’ll need to pay the full fee – starting from $574 to $683 in keeping with the month – themselves, through payroll deductions. Though I am elevating everybody’s income through $3,000 per 12 months, or $250 consistent with month, as a partial offset to the loss of organization-paid health insurance, folks who remain on the organization plan may have a significant new out-of-pocket expense.

Some will undoubtedly make other preparations as an alternative. A few can select to be included under a spouse’s or domestic partner’s plan. In New York, where state law already calls for insurers to cover own family individuals via age 29, a few may be able to join a parent’s plan. These staffers can also emerge as benefiting from the pay raise.

My personnel could favor going uninsured. The new federal requirement for all adults to have coverage or pay the penalty does not impact until 2014. I hope no one makes this preference. However, they’re adults, and the decision now’s of their fingers.

Our employees in Florida and Georgia have checked out the market for personalized coverage. In those states, they may buy proper, if not best, insurance with the $250 according to the monthly improvement I am giving them. We may also cope with unfavorable tax outcomes later with a few kinds of the bendy benefits programs, but our people in the one’s states want not to take a big financial hit to stay insured.

New York is some other story. It has many mandates for man or woman coverage regulations that make such insurance within the Empire State very highly-priced. Our Scarsdale workforce is probably to locate that the organization plan, costly as it’s far, is less expensive than man or woman coverage even for a healthful young person.