Webcast report: Our response to Employer responsibility.

Likes:

- Employers should opt in or pay some percentage of wages towards health insurance.

- Brings everyone into the pool, like car insurance.

Missing or Concerns:
- Loophole potential – as start-up firms will be excluded, what does that exactly entail? Many companies may classify themselves as start-up firms. Companies will often be comprised of exactly ten employees.

- Employers are stuck with increases in health care premiums anyway – advantage would be that this would contain the increases; an attractive thing for employers – flatten increases over time. Asks for less of employers than the current system.

- What about part-time employees? There is no stipulations for them.

- Wages may be affected.

- How will“low income”be defined? Especially in California, costs of living are very high. Different steps of subsidies are needed.

- Target is that everyone is covered and that we don't need to get involved with who is employing us. A baseline of coverage is key – that way no great negotiations are needed. This gets too complicated when looking at employment status. This all reverts to the value issue. “ping pong negotiation”

- But how do we move away from a profit-based system?

- Wellness vs recovery as a framework for looking at medical treatment issues.

- The most vulnerable people aren't affected by this at all – ie the homeless, the people who use ER for basic health care.