Union pulls support for Obamacare, a sign of things to come?

[bu villain]

I responded to most of this within my response to Jimmy but just to add a few more details

At my current level, health care benefits are still a major part of employee compensation. I know that lower paid employees have less emphasis on them, as I used to be one, but my point is that what the company pays out is relevant if you are looking to see if the employee is still getting the same compensation for their job as before. If you cut $2K out from what the employer pays out, but only give the employee $500 more, then the employee is then receiving less compensation for the same work. Right now, they don't know what the employer is paying out.

If the employees won't know the difference, why don't they just cut their $2k health benefits and give those employees $500 more right now?

Lower wage earners don't tend to be good negotiators of compensation. If they were, they would not be lower wage earners. Aren't these the people that Obama wants to help?

Same response as above. Why are they currently giving these benefits if their employees don't know the difference.

Funded Pensions are usually used by private employers and were paid into plans. Unfunded ones are usually state governments. If the company went belly up, the pension plan still was in place, and you still get your benefits as the pension was funded.
Do you realize that most of the pension plans have been killed off since 2008? They are being replaced or eliminated very quickly now at an accelerated pace. The only reason that the last 30 companies haven't replaced them is that they haven't had HR do it yet.

But how does that support your argument that the replacement of pensions with 401(k) resulted in lower overall compensation for employees?

I agree that they are both compensation - that's what I have said this whole time.
Employees won't switch jobs much when the economy is down - fear keeps them in place. Companies take advantage and reduce benefits when the economy is down. When the economy is booming, and its hard to find employees, then they will add in more benefits to attract more employees.
You can see it with raises right now - many employees have not been getting raises for several years, yet they stay in place.

Yes companies can often reduce benefits in compensation and salary in a bad economy. But that is true whether you have health care benefits or not so I fail to see how health care benefits deserve any special consideration here.

Correct. Costs will rise until the demand for healthcare services starts to decline. Supply and demand.

Good then we can agree this is a separate topic for the time being.

If you can't access medical history, then you have no way to assign risk, other than a vague, generic amount. We see this with car insurance. Right now, they can look at your DMV record - what happens if they no longer can look and see how many points that you have? The answer is that they will raise the rates across the board. They will still cover their bases - they won't operate at a loss. Someone has to pay for it all - all you are doing is shifting the cost to someone who should have had a lower rate.

Yes, that is exactly what I expect to happen. Many people will receive higher rates to cover those with preexisting conditions. The whole point of insurance is to shift costs. Coming from a young, healthy person, I fully understand my premiums will undoubtedly go up but I still believe it is a better option for society as a whole.