Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Obamacare: Driving Up Costs And Driving Down Those Insured
Obamacare: Driving Up Costs And Driving Down Those Insured
Nov 30, 2025 9:06 PM

Delta Airlines has announced that it foresees a spike in health care costs for pany to the tune of $100 million a year. A Delta executive, Robert Kight, has said that fees associated with Obamacare will be costly, but won’t likely be more beneficial than what pany’s employees now have.

One of the costly items pertains to an annual fee of $63 per “covered participant” next year. pany estimates this means a more than $10 million expense in 2014. The catch for Delta is that, because many of their employees insure through Delta, the fee meant to help subsidize the health care law’s coverage amounts to a “direct subsidy” from pany that provides “zero direct benefit to our participants,” Kight said.

Another added es from the requirement to cover children and young adults on parents’ plans until they’re 26 years old. Kight reports that the change led to 8,000 more people being added to their rolls, at an annual cost of $14 million.

Further, the individual mandate — or the requirement on individuals to obtain health insurance — is expected to drive more people into pany plan and drive up their costs by another $14 million.

es just after the announcement from UPS and the University of Virginia that they are both dropping spousal insurance for their employees due to the cost of Obamacare. UPS told its employees:

Since the Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide affordable coverage, we believe your spouse should be covered by their own employer — just as U.P.S. has a responsibility to offer coverage to you, our employee.”

“In an effort to maintain premiums at or below current cost,” Andrew McGowan, a U.P.S. spokesman, said, “U.P.S. made a change that affects a limited number of employees.”

This plan affects about one-quarter of the UPS workforce in the U.S.

While the University of Virginia has been a supporter of Obamacare, the $7 million per year spousal support was expected to add to their budget proved to be too much of a burden for the school.

Along with cuts to family insurance plans, Obamacare is forcing many businesses to cut employee hours, especially in the food service industry. The Economist says that Obamacare isn’t a healthy plan for our nation at all:

…Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago contends that Obamacare’s distortions to the labour market will outweigh any growth from lowering health costs…Mr Mulligan predicts that Americans will work 3% less in 2015 than they otherwise would have.

Interestingly, the number of jobs in sectors most affected by Obamacare, such as retail, leisure and hospitality, have grown relatively quickly, notes Alec Phillips of Goldman Sachs. But the hours worked in such industries have grown more slowly, suggesting a reluctance to add more full-time jobs.

When the final diagnosis is done, Obamacare may have nasty side-effects.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
What We Have Here is a Failure of Political Leadership
In yesterday’s edition of the Grand Rapids Press, editorial page editor Ed Golder reflects on the implications of the historically-high levels of government spending, the deficit, and debt. Most impressively, Golder notes where the government is actually spending money, and it is largely not in the areas of discretionary spending that so many politicians like to talk about. Golder writes, Neither party is forthrightly honest about what needs to be done. Making the necessary cuts touches on very large and...
Acton on Tap: Faith and Public Life in Reagan’s America
Ronald Reagan is in the news quite a bit these days. President Barack Obama is even trying to model himself after the popular president, as this piece in Time points out. Reagan’s centennial birthday is February 6. The Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library Centennial homepage is the essential site for information on the celebration. On February 17, those in the Grand Rapids area should plan on attending Acton on Tap at Derby Station in East Grand Rapids for a discussion...
Acton Lecture Series 2010 Recap: Miller & Carrasco
Continuing our recap of last year’s Acton Lecture Series in anticipation of Thursday’s opening lecture of the 2011 ALS (which you can register for right here), we’re pleased to present the video from February and March of 2010. On February 18, 2010, Acton’s Director of Media Michael Miller Delivered a lecture entitled “Does Capitalism Destroy Culture?” His lecture discussed the positive and negative impact of capitalism in society today. Miller pointed out that it’s not just Christians that are worried...
Deeper Truths Magnify Reagan Centennial
mentary this week is about the deeper truths of Ronald Reagan’s witness, words, and deeds. Reagan has been in the news a lot, and will continue to be as we approach his centennial birthday. A great place to visit for all things concerning the Reagan centennial is the Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library Centennial homepage. President Obama even weighed in on Reagan, heaping praise on the popular president in USA Today. It’s essential to look at what makes his words...
Talking About Babel
Two more thoughtful reviews of Jordan Ballor’s Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church’s Social Witness are in. Ross Emmett says that, “those concerned about the role of the church in the world today can learn a lot by reading and reflecting on Ballor’s excellent critique of the ecumenical movement’s political economy.” And in the new issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, Thomas Sieger Derr agrees with Jordan that the ecumenical movement should be “appropriately circumspect in...
Rev. Sirico: Civility, not just after tragedy
The Detroit News today published a new column by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute: Civility, not just after tragedy The Rev. Robert Sirico The tragic shootings in Tucson that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords gravely wounded and a score of others dead or wounded have sparked a national discussion about how we conduct our public discourse. This is something we should all e, in an age of instantaneous media and its often vitriolic political...
Acton Lecture Series 2010 Recap: Dr. John Pinheiro
On Thursday, Acton kicks off the 2011 Acton Lecture Series with an address by Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico entitled “Christian Poverty in an Age of Prosperity.” (If you haven’t done so already, you can register to attend the lecture at this link.) To set the stage for the 2011 series, I’ll be posting video of last year’s lecture series on the Powerblog all week long. In January of last year, we ed Dr. John Pinheiro to the podium...
News: Acton Institute Among Top Global Think Tanks
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Feb. 1, 2011) — A new survey of 5,500 organizations by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania ranked the Acton Institute among the best global social policy organizations and in the top 50 think tanks overall in the United States. The 2010 Global Go-To Think Tank Rankings, directed by James G. McGann of the International Relations department at Penn, put Acton at No. 12 on the Top 25 Social Policy Think...
The Amnesiac Civility of Jim Wallis
Peter Wehner on Commentary Magazine’s Contentions blog looks at the recent joint statement on civility from Jim Wallis and Chuck Colson: … what is worth noting, I think, is that Wallis (as opposed to Colson) has repeatedly violated mitment to civility. For example, in 2007, Wallis said: “I believe that Dick Cheney is a liar; that Donald Rumsfeld is also a liar; and that George W. Bush was, and is, clueless about how to be the president of the United...
Christianity and the Politics of Prison and Redemption
In a fine post over at the History News Network (HT: Religion in America), Jennifer Graber, assistant professor of religious studies at The College of Wooster and author of the ing book, The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America, reflects on what the Michael Vick saga (to date) shows us about American attitudes towards crime, punishment, and redemption. Graber briefly traces the development of public policy and social attitudes towards punishment for violent and heinous crimes. She...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved