11 ms·
Whole Foods Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k Employees
- tdurden 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958631
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Ididntdothis 7y agoHealth insurance really needs to be disconnected from employment. The fact alone that this article was written is already ridiculous.
- jumbopapa 7y agoStarted back in WW2 when the government restricted the ability for employers to offer higher salaries, so employers offered additional compensation to employees outside of salary. That coupled with today's tax incentives have made it stick.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI know that history. But it’s time to change something that made sense a long time ago but now is distorting the whole employment market, costs a lot of money and causes a lot of suffering.
- curiousgal 7y ago> But it’s time to change something that made sense a long time ago... Gun ownership, electoral college, for profit prisons (slavery), etc. Those are all things that made some sense back in the past but still exist.
- robohoe 7y agoGun ownership still makes sense.
- curiousgal 7y agoIt makes sense to form an armed militia in order to fight the government?
- artificial 7y agoHow’s it going in Hong Kong?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 7y agoHow do you think it would be going if Hong Kong has gun ownership at the level of the US?
- mc32 7y agoOr Venezuela. As part of consolidating power, often authoritarian governments implement an arms buyback or confiscation program to minimize armed uprising later on.
- artificial 7y agoI like the Orwellian term “buy back” as if you purchased arms from them in the first place, and secondly they’re using your money to deprive you. For the small arms nay sayers (against a well equipped military) case in point is Afghanistan, guerrillas wore down the Soviets.
- cheeseomlit 7y agoIt certainly did in 1765. Do you really think the government should have a monopoly on force? Might = power, you disarm the population and they are rendered powerless. I just don't understand putting that much trust in the government
- fredthomsen 7y agoThis is covered very well in the book "America's Bitter Pill"
- RankingMember 7y agoAgree 100%, if just to stop that element of job anxiety alone. Lose your job, lose your coverage (unless you want to get plowed on COBRA) is a high-risk way to operate.
- drchewbacca 7y agoIn the UK we have the NHS and it is so great. There's waiting lists but basically you never worry about healthcare, it's always there when you need it and it's all (pretty much) free at the point of use. It's almost certainly the best thing we've got.
- IanDrake 7y agoWe should probably have something like the an optional "free" government run facility for nose bleeds, sprained ankles, and Viagra prescriptions in the US, but I'll keep my privately funded health care for real problems, thanks. I don't even see the UK on these lists. CT Scanners: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266539/distribution-of-equipment-for-computer-tomography/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266539/distribution-of-e... MRI Machines: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic-resonance-imaging-units-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnet... Perhaps the UK should be on the list, but somewhere near the bottom: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2672902/Deadly-shortage-cancer-scanners-shames-UK-Britain-fewer-MRI-machines-Western-country.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2672902/Deadly-shor...
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoI wouldn't recommend quoting the dailymail for anything of any use beyond a laugh. They have a deadly shortage of journalism.
- IanDrake 7y agoHaha, seriously, that's your argument? Granted it's from 2014, but are you disputing the following facts as reported then? "The report shows the UK has only 5.9 MRI units per million people, less than half the OECD average of 13.3." "On CT scanners we are 30th out of 32 countries, in front of only Hungary and Mexico. The numbers concern only NHS scanners." The source is irrelevant.
- Frost1x 7y agoThis is the core problem in the United States. The second is increased housing costs in many locations leading to renting vs ownership in many cases (this is easier fought currently by moving). The two attributes together tie most people into some degree of modern indentured servitude for the very wealthy--there just happen to be many layers in between people and the extremely wealthy trying to obscure that fact. Yes, there is a degree of freedom of choice but employment policies converge to benefit employers across industry so the choice is between an red and yellow apple.
- drchewbacca 7y agoAs an outsider I think other core problems of the US are corporate capture of the legislative process and gerrymandering pushing candidates to extreme positions.
- jrockway 7y agoExtreme positions are just the reality of 2019 culture. I was reading a Twitter war about whether or not a professional Hearthstone player was paying enough attention to the game during one of his matches. It was a sea of hate-filled vitriol from both sides. Reading it, I was honestly a little sick to my stomach seeing what social media has become. If we're going to get that upset over a children's card game, it follows that we're going to get upset over things that actually matter.
- drchewbacca 7y agoI think how systems are setup does matter though. For example if you are running for a congressional seat which is 50% republican voters and 50% democrats I would imagine that being a moderate centrist is probably a relatively good strategy. If the seat is 80% one side then probably you want to be much more extreme in that direction because what the other 20% thinks doesn't matter so much. However I agree, the internet was meant to make us all open minded and tolerant and yet has had the opposite impact.
- IanDrake 7y ago
- mc32 7y agoIt should be disconnected from _employer_. Whether it’s disconnected from _employment_ is a different question. Some countries cover everyone regardless of employment status, others depend on employment status but isn’t tied to a particular employer. Obviously one is preferred over the other but both are better than health tied to a particular employer.
- tboyd47 7y agoI agree with you, but how do you address the counterargument that financing health care requires pooling funds at some level, and a company is a logical place to do that seeing as how they have an interest in having everyone come to work on time?
- swiley 7y agoThey don’t offer car insurance even though they’re interested in having employees come to work on time.
- tboyd47 7y agoThis should be the top reply.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoHow about “a country is a logical place to do that seeing as how they have an interest in having everyone access to health care and a dignified life” If you had to design a system from scratch now there is no way you would come up with employer based health insurance. It’s a stupid system. Bad for citizens and bad for employers.
- eropple 7y agoBy replying with "workers are human beings and there is no moral reason to allow paperclip-maximizers to have that literally-death grip on the means of their production," generally. Tying health care to employment is a formative cause of wage slavery. It should not stand--and that's before you even get to the economic inefficiency of the health care market itself.
- gerbilly 7y ago> and a company is a logical place to do that This has several unintended consequences: 1) People stay in jobs they hate just for the insurance. This harms both the company and the individual. 2) It reduces entrepreneurship. In Canada if I want to start my own company, I don't have to worry about losing health insurance. 3) Children don't work (yet I guess) and old people don't work, so you need other systems to cover them, or just not cover them at all.
- papito 7y agoReally just an excuse to not have any insurance. "Oh, but what about the stress on employers" copout. We all pay for someone if they have a medical emergency, it's a matter of being a citizen, and you know, alive.
- cmrdporcupine 7y agoAs a Canadian, this aspect of the United States health care "system" (if you can call it that) has always baffled me: for a country that blasts its love of capitalism to the whole world, and emphasizes its past revolutionary actions against the old world of aristocrats and monarchs -- this is a glaringly _feudal_ model of health care delivery. Having employees depend on their lord^H^H^H^Hemployer for their very physical existence... how medieval.
- RonaldSchleifer 7y agoI totally agree, but unfortunately, the very origins of that issue lies squarely in the very cause for why these types of things cannot be solved, because the authoritarian paternalistic types who think they helping just keep making the Gordian Knot bigger and more convoluted instead. You are looking at it wrong (to be direct). You can get all the health insurance disconnected from employment you want just like any other self-employed and independently affluent people get. It's there, freely available to you. No one is stopping you. Ironically, you can even get that insurance when you are employed, even though you will literally pay a massive penalty for being employed by doing so in the form of the unrealized and hidden cost of the un-utilized employer contribution to the health care cost, which you would then have to pay out of pocket on top of that. (tip, if you want to decouple health insurance from employers, go for the tax advantages of providing health insurance plans ... which touches on the origins of this damn mess caused by the do-gooders fools that demanded employers provide health care in the past). The real problem is a perception issue that people do not understand the true nature and cost of health insurance/care which also leads them to not understand that their employer puts up many times more in health insurance costs than the premiums the employee pays every month. The problem is a perception problem, and a health care cost problem at its core, and the employment dependency issue is really just a secondary issue that is utterly meaningless. What does it matter whether you could sever and ban employers from even offering health insurance under a glorious socialist authoritarian regime while racing towards communist demise? Does it matter whether you pay $200 and your employer pays another $700 every month in premiums, or instead your employer simply just adds another $700 to your paycheck per month and you pay the full $900 for health insurance every month out of pocket? All other things being equal, I argue it's the same thing, because math. Reality is that it's a cost issue that directly is derived from a corruption issue. For example, before the government committed fraud, aka, stole, and handed the health sector (insurance and care) trillions of dollars in profits through the ACA, aka Obamacare, (do not believe me, confirm it yourself if it makes you uncomfortable that I am questioning your messiah Obama, just look at the health sector stock market pre and post ACA [1]), which is one of the sources of corruption that has driven the cost of health care up from (single person example) ~$100/$500 employee/employer split cost for health insurance before ACA to ~$200/$700 post ACA. The other corruption that has been driving up health care costs and therefore defrauding people is (which his true, regardless of whether one is able to accept it or not) due to the millions of "immigrants" both "legal" and illegal, that have been transported into the USA to defraud the American citizens that are part of the 99%, which put massive amounts of load on the health system with ailments, diseases, and conditions; many of which were essentially unknown and/or eradicated in the whole of the western world before just a few years ago.[2 (which is not quite the full extent but a thread that can be pulled on if one wants] When citizens who are being financially enslaved to pay for the health care of millions of "immigrants" from the third world with degenerative diseases and conditions, it is going to cost and that cost will always be and it is going to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions per individual. And no, that is not an exaggeration. The information can be relatively easily uncovered even though I do not have the ability to pull it up right now for citation. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwhelming-evidence-that-obamacare-caused-premiums-to-increase-substantially/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwh... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2018/02/26/how-american-citizens-finance-health-care-for-undocumented-immigrants/#40b5968612c4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2018/02/26/how-am...
- vnchr 7y agoWould it be fair to say, "Amazon Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k Employees Of Whole Foods Division"?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- givinguflac 7y agoSeriously. Jeff bozo is a greedy monster.
- benologist 7y agoIf he spent a morning conspiring to profit at his employees' expense then he earned more while dreaming of their demise than he actually saved by clawing back their healthcare. AWS alone nets something like a million in profit an hour. This is why we should stop using AWS. AWS is disproportionately enabling this horrible person.
- swarnie_ 7y agoNot exactly, his job as CEO of Amazon is to drive shareholder value. You can complain about the system but its silly to call names at the people who play the system best.
- jachee 7y agoAccording to the Business Roundtable[0], times have changed, and shareholder value is only part of the purpose of a corporation, and that investment in employees is a vital part of the ultimate value proposition. [0] - https://opportunity.businessroundtable.org/ourcommitment/ https://opportunity.businessroundtable.org/ourcommitment/
- bb822 7y agoRight, the Business Roundtable, led by venerable and respected institutions such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Exxon, Chevron, General Dynamics, and--wait for it-- Amazon. It's virtue signaling.
- technotarek 7y agoFor those who might not read the article, the key here is that they're increasing the minimum hours/week required for the benefit to 30 (from 20). The article suggests they will help those impacted to transition to the longer work week, although that's certainly not an option for everyone.
- avemg 7y agoWhile technically correct, this assertion has quite the positive Amazon spin on it. They are required by federal law to provide health insurance to employees who work 30 hours or more.
- tyingq 7y agoIt's also unlikely that many will be offered the 30 hours. It's not like AMZN wants to pay for 20,000 additional hours per week.
- hotsauceror 7y agoNot only do they not have an incentive to extend the 20-hour folks to 30-hours schedules, they now have a very strong incentive to decrease their current 30+ hour part-timers to 29 hour schedules per week.
- ryandrake 7y agoWhen my wife worked retail, this was the standard. Nobody worked more than 29 hours a week. They had people begging for more hours but when the company needed more hours worked, they hired someone new rather than assign any one person more than 29. AFAIK nearly all of retail does this now. If the limit for requiring insurance was 20, they’d cut everyone’s hours to 19 and hire more.
- mikeash 7y agoPut another way, they’re giving their part time workers a massive pay cut.
- geodel 7y agoI bet financial press is now discussing how this will lower the price of bananas at Whole Foods.
- notfromhere 7y agoThey'll be bleating about how this is will be good for shareholder value
- wonderwonder 7y ago'As for the affected employees, they will be provided “with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” the representative added' If those resources are not money, then the employee is really out of luck as they likely will not be able to afford whatever those alternatives are. In addition, there is no way you can take a bunch of people that work 20 hours per week and let them work 30, no need for that many scheduled hours, just fancy corporate communications. Amazon has the right to do whatever they want to increase Shareholder value; however, shareholder value is the root of the modern trend of devaluing people and treating them as line items in an expense report. Many of these people likely have this job primarily for the health insurance it provides. I think it is time for the US to switch to a universal healthcare system. Removing the responsibility of corporations to manage health care would free up a large amount of resources they could invest in expansions, wage increases (likely c-suite bonuses). In addition it would allow individuals, especially working parents to more freely make employment decisions and find careers that are both financially but also emotionally rewarding. I think it would have a major impact on the working structure of this country. Not to mention it would allow people to actually go to the doctor when they need to.
- tyingq 7y agoIf you have a family, my rough experience is that a good, medium deductible, decent percentage coverage healthcare plan is about $400-500/month if it's employer subsidized. But anywhere from $1300 to $2k+/month if it isn't. It's a pretty terrible market out there if you don't have an employer subsidizing it and using their size for negotiation leverage.
- wonderwonder 7y agoI agree. My wife's company offers better insurance than mine so I had always been on hers and declined the insurance offered by my company. Her company just implemented a policy stating that if the spouse is eligible for insurance through their own employer there would be a $200 per month surcharge for them electing to use her companies. I understand where her company is coming from but I think we as a nation (US) can do better.
- elicash 7y agoThe best description of the specifics here I've seen came from reddit: > Leadership has been told that all PT TMs will not be able to work more than 19hrs a week and that even those originally grandfathered from this restriction are now included in this new policy. Additionally, “difficult discussions” would have to take place with these TMs. PBS even sent out a list of all PT TMs in the store that fall into this category. It sounds like a lot of misinformation is circulating throughout the stores and company. Hopefully it will all be sorted out and PT TMs will be able to work up to 29hr weeks. https://www.reddit.com/r/wholefoods/comments/d3r04k/amazons_whole_foods_to_cut_medical_benefits_for/f0ma0pk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wholefoods/comments/d3r04k/amazons_...
- RonaldSchleifer 7y agoLet's recognize that the headline should read: Amazon Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k Whole Foods Employees I am guessing that due to the food perspective of the blog they focused on the Whole Foods aspect of the story, but this is clearly a dystopian corporation story, not a grocer story.
- bfrog 7y agoIs Whole Foods losing money? If not why do this.
- Aloha 7y agoWhole Foods has 91,000 employees, this effects 1900 of them - a little over 2% of the total or right around 4 people per store. While it's unfortunate for those effected, it seems mostly a way to get more availability out of their employees rather than purely a cost savings measure.
- throwaway2048 7y agoI'm sure that's very comforting to the people effected by this.
- xtracto 7y agohttps://www.grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/effect_vs_affect_1.asp https://www.grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/effect_vs_affect_1....
- tombert 7y agoMy brother in law works at Taco Bell and faces a similar problem. He works between 15-25 hours a week at a franchise, and apparently he needs at least 30 hours consistently to be eligible for insurance. He has asked multiple times to have his hours increased, but they have repeatedly denied him. He can't afford to pay for a plan (which start at around $400/month in NYC), and since he got his green card only two years ago, he can't apply for any kind of government assistance on this. The really frustrating part of this also comes with the fact that he's trying to get his GED to hopefully get a higher-paying job with benefits, but the GED exam apparently requires that you have coverage.
- Onawa 7y agoThe GED requires that you have health insurance to take it? I looked around for more information about this, but I can't seem to find anything. Do you have more information? I took my GED back in 2009 and I don't remember having to supply any information about whether I was insured.
- tombert 7y agoI think it might vary between states. In this case, it's NY. I can ask him tonight for clarification.
- chrshawkes 7y agoI'm middle of the road. Hard working and highly paid. Healthcare in the USA is broken beyond belief. I pay over 300 bi-weekly for family coverage and high deductibles beyond that. It goes higher each year. My employer pays over nearly 800 per week. I'm not using what I pay and honestly feel we're getting to a point where even a highly paid associate is going to drop out of this garbage plan and just go to the hospital or urgent care and pay out of pocket. Something needs to be done about healthcare! I'm boycotting Amazon for this.
- Merrill 7y agoHealthcare is about 18% of GDP or about a $3470 billion a year. It should be shrunk down to about 12%, but that would require terminating millions of employees who work in healthcare and are the major cost component. The industry also needs to get rid of lots of real estate. Shrinking healthcare would cause a bigger bloodbath in commercial real estate than the one currently going on in retail stores.
- nextstep 7y agoHealthcare needs to be decoupled from employment and guaranteed to everyone. It’s time for Medicare for All.
- AzzieElbab 7y agojust playing a amz-devil advocate, what is the point of hiring part-time employees who earn 30-40K a year and pay them just as much in health benefits? america's health care costs are out of this world and that is a much tougher problem to tackle as opposed to who is paying for it