23 ms·

Intuit asked Mailchimp employees to pay medical costs out of pocket

381 points by luu 5y ago

ericbarrett 5y ago
Tweet is dated November 2021.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
obi1kenobi 5y ago
Interesting detail I wasn't familiar with, and very unfortunate. I know I wouldn't have been happy to be put in that situation :( It was published on Nov 11, 2021 so perhaps consider a (2021) tag in the submission title?
PaywallBuster 5y ago
Mr Derrick seems to have gotten triggered by all this, which looks nothing but the unfortunate side effects of the US tax/legal system, and in that regard I'd guess it occurs often enough. In the other hand consider that Mailchimp employees probably fared much better working on a digital all online product and getting their above average salaries than the average person, who actually lost their jobs, savings and health insurance due to covid
- bartvk 5y ago
  Is it really the unfortunate side effect of the US tag/legal system? As an outsider (from Europe), it seems that Intuit was able to take over Mailchimp, but was not able to smoothly transition their new employees from one insurer to another.
imglorp 5y ago
Why is health insurance tied to employer, again? Is there a reason that should continue?
- lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  Right? I believe that practice should be banned. There's really NO reason for it now.
  - briffle 5y ago
    Or at least made optional. Do you want our health insurance plan, or an extra $1500/month to find your own on the open market would be an interesting way of looking at it. But either way, both your employer and your cost for health insurance should show up on everyone's pay statements. Most have no idea what their employer pays for insurance.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  Historical and tax reasons. It started back in the era of WWII wage controls. It continued to be an okay way to do group insurance without facing major problems with adverse selection. Being able to pay for it with a pre-tax payrolld eduction is the other big reason it thrived. Given the mandates on insurance there are some reasons it should continue, but they are not really good reasons.
  - zamalek 5y ago
    > some reasons it should continue, but they are not really good reasons. Many of those reasons are legislature that allows insurance companies to do/demand things that they really shouldn't be able to. Even if the goal isn't public healthcare, America still needs a major healthcare insurance restructuring.
    - rhacker 5y ago
      I think that should look like this: HMO style access for all - automatically. Rebate if you decide to up it with PPO style insurance (or beyond). So you get 200 per month off taxes to pay towards your own insurance. Also, get it out of the employers hands - as in make it illegal to offer any benefits and let the employee get paid 100% of their salary instead. Also make it so that employers can't legally collect taxes without consent.
oofabz 5y ago
I wish employers did not provide health insurance, even though I have a chronic medical condition. The choices of plans offered by companies is far, far smaller than the choices available to me on the open market. I don't want to have to find new health insurance if my employment situation changes, possibly leaving me with a gap in coverage. The expectation that employer-provided benefits are at no cost to the employee is a fallacy - if companies did not offer health care as a perk, they would be able to offer higher salaries instead. The only reason American employers are in the business of offering health insurance is because they get a federal tax break. This makes health insurance cheaper to the employer than to individuals. Given this, if my employer stopped offering insurance, they couldn't increase my salary enough for me to purchase the same plan myself. I think this is unfair - I would like to get the same tax break myself, or at least eliminate the tax break altogether so I am on an even playing field with businesses. This would allow me to purchase my own health insurance at rates comparable to what I'm offered at work. Considering the tax situation, it's curious that Intuit would not choose to take this tax break. It seems like a short term move that allows them to cut costs while exploiting the economic stickiness of employment. This move makes them less competitive for employees in the labor market, but that only affects them in the long term. In the short term, the employees they have will be hesistant and slow to find new jobs.
- NoblePublius 5y ago
  There is no “tax break.” It’s unlawful for me not to buy health Insurance for my employees (more than 50) and you aren’t allowed to shop the open market if you work for me. Average cost per employee is $1150 this year (up about 11% over last year). Thanks Obama.
  - synaesthesisx 5y ago
    Dude $1150 per employee is literally nothing. That's less than $100/month, per employee, for health insurance. Individuals should still have an option to choose a plan on the open market if they desire, but they're highly unlikely to find a plan for $100/month.
    - 5y ago
duxup 5y ago
> until their health insurance retroactively becomes available I feel like the title is missing that bit. Doesn’t make it ok, but the situation is dramatically different with even the limitations of a single tweet compared to the title.
- brimble 5y ago
  It's still asking employees to float their enormous mega-corp employer potentially thousands of dollars (each) in short-term loans.
  - nightski 5y ago
    It's more like floating the insurance company. The employer would never directly pay these things.
    - epall 5y ago
      Most employers in the U.S. over about 1,000 employees are “self-insured”, meaning they hire the insurance company for the network and administration, but the company actually does directly pay out claims. At over 1k employees, I expect MailChimp was already self-insuring, and Intuit definitely does.
      - bradly 5y ago
        Intuit is indeed self-insured.
- luu 5y ago
  If you can suggest an edit that will fit within HN's title length limit that conveys the sentiment of the entire tweet, please feel free to do so. Appending enough of the missing text to convey anything useful violates the limit, but maybe the title could be compressed in another way. I don't think I can edit the title anymore, but one of the mods can edit it.
  - 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
What do you expect from a company whose business is spamming?
endisneigh 5y ago
What I don't get is why can't someone, say, one of us, pool together our own insurance that exists outside the employer?
- dangrossman 5y ago
  Insurance does exist outside the employer. I've been self-employed all my life, so I've been purchasing my own insurance without an employer for about 20 years. I used to go directly to a company like Aetna or Blue Shield to buy my coverage, now I go to healthcare.gov once a year to pick a plan.
  - andrewxdiamond 5y ago
    The gap here is that employer paid plans are subsidized by the employer, who uses them as a tax write off, making un-subsidized plans much more expensive in comparison
    - dangrossman 5y ago
      True. If you're self-employed, your health insurance premiums are personally tax deductible. If you're not and you make up to 400% of the federal poverty level, the government subsidizes marketplace plans for you similar to an employer. It's not just the self-employed that buy their own insurance, but all the millions of hourly employees that aren't offered healthcare benefits through their employer(s) either.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      I have no tax knowledge at all, but if you were to create a pass through corporation who purchased the health insurance on the behalf of its members, could you deduct said fees and then pass the savings onto the members the following years? I guess the overhead of setting up such an organization plus the fact that said corporation wouldn't actually have any revenue are big issues.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
bpodgursky 5y ago
This happens all the time when people switch insurance or go onto COBRA. You get retroactively covered for some period after your new plan becomes active. It doesn't end up with people paying tens of thousands out of pocket, people just don't pay the bills that come in during that period, and kick them to insurance later. It sucks but is not really uncommon or possibly even something Intuit has a ton of control over.
- sc68cal 5y ago
  How many people realistically go into COBRA. Have you seen the premiums? For family coverage it can easily be thousands per month.
  - toast0 5y ago
    COBRA wasn't that far off of marketplace prices for me. If I thought I'd use the better coverage/better benefits during the COBRA period, and I was confident my former employer would inform COBRA users of issues at least as well as they did employees, I might have considered it. IIUC, COBRA rates are more or less the total employee and employer rate, maybe plus a limited administration fee? Also, I don't think COBRA pricing varies by age, but marketplace plans do, so if my spouse or I were older, COBRA might have been a good deal. All that said, I think most people switching jobs keep the COBRA paperwork in case something big happens before they get new coverage in place. There's a grace period on the first payment, if you need coverage, you can pay until the grace period and get retroactive coverage; if you don't need coverage, don't pay. Some people even prepare the payment but leave instructions to send it in if they're incapacitated.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
Twitter is not a blogging platform and makes for bad HN stories. You don't get the full picture or context and they aren't updated later. https://slashdot.org/story/21/11/11/1634237/intuit-slashes-pay-and-cuts-health-benefits-of-mailchimp-employees https://slashdot.org/story/21/11/11/1634237/intuit-slashes-p... https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-employees-shocked-when-health-benefits-ended-at-intuit-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-employees-shocked-...
- nulbyte 5y ago
  The tweet definitely leaves a lot out. My initial impression was, "that sounds reasonable." I got insurance retroactive to my hire date when I switched jobs last, but it took time for paperwork to be processed, so of course I would pay up front before then. But the article reads more like the sellers dropped the ball by cutting the insurance without ensuring their former employees were properly taken care of. There is plenty of blame to lay at Intuit's feet, but it's not like the former owners of Mailchimp didn't know what everyone else knows. Sounds like they just wanted some quick cash and everything else was someone else's problem.
  - lifeplusplus 5y ago
    Didn't MailChimp employees got bad deal because they had no equity to begin with of my memory serves me right
    - beckler 5y ago
      Correct, it was entirely owned by the founders.
- jlmorton 5y ago
  On the other hand, Business Insider has a giant paywall that doesn't let you view anything at all, and Slashdot links to Business Insider.
cudgy 5y ago
Yet another reason for medical care to have nothing to do with your employer … thank Obama for sealing that deal with the ACA / Big Insurance Company Handout. Good luck severing the connection.
- anonymousisme 5y ago
  Agree. Creating corporate sovereignty for insurance companies just re-enforces government interference in a free economy. As a result of the interference, health providers have continuously raised their prices far beyond what anybody would pay in a free market. If nobody had insurance, what do you suppose would happen to health care costs? Answer: They would adjust to what the market will bear.
  - ihumanable 5y ago
    Someone about to die from a medical episode will bear a surprising amount to not die.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  If you researched the negotiations that led to the ACA, you would see that the public option was favored by Obama, but had to be nixed to get a few holdout senators on board. You can thank the Obama admin for at least getting rid of pre existing conditions clauses and for out of pocket maximums, which was more progress that anyone has made before or after.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/why-obama-dropped-the-public-option/346546/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/why-oba... This article presents your viewpoint along with quite a few others which mostly point toward Obama’s ineffectiveness and lack of effort toward accomplishing this while having a clear Democrat majority in both houses. No surprise though as Obama era is not the only failure to move toward single payer … look at what California managed to accomplish with a vast majority of liberal Democrats a couple months ago … https://m.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2022/02/01/why-single-payer-died-in-the-california-legislature-again https://m.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2022/02/01...
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
The worse a company treats its employees, the less loyal they will be, and the more likely it is that one of them decides to earn money by abusing their insider access, either out of greed or despair. Like when someone at Mailchimp sold out the users of various Mailchimp customers to criminals (https://twitter.com/Trezor/status/1510558771944333312 https://twitter.com/Trezor/status/1510558771944333312).
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  The thing is that pre-acquisition mailchimp was an example of a place tech employees loved to work but not for the equity. The founders built a strong internal culture of private ownership and then bailed for a payday. If any other company sold out and employees got short changed, it wouldn’t make the news. https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-... > When employees were recruited to work at Mailchimp there was a common refrain from hiring managers: No, you are not going to get equity, but you will get to be part of a scrappy company that fights for the little guy and we will never be acquired or go public.
cwkoss 5y ago
Mailchimp workers should go on strike until their healthcare coverage is properly functioning
- inopinatus 5y ago
  One might equally suggest that all American workers should go on strike until their healthcare system is properly functioning.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kieselguhr_kid 5y ago
    It's not the worst idea
  - HigherPlain 5y ago
    Most americans are happy with their employee health plan. Why would they go on strike?
    - CogitoCogito 5y ago
      > Most americans are happy with their employee health plan. Why would they go on strike? I'm not sure if your claim about most Americans being happy with their healthcare is right or wrong, but that doesn't mean it can't be significantly improved nor that it compares that well internationally: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2071992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2071992/ Personally I'd choose the Swedish system over the American system any day. The US healthcare system is probably one of the main things giving me pause about moving back to the US actually. edit: Americans perception of their healthcare is kind of interesting actually: https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-health-costs-new-high.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-h... The US has long spent much more per capita than the rest of the world and has had worse outcomes than most (all?) comparable nations. Americans are good at rationalizing away this sort of thing ("we can't have better healthcare because we're fat"), but that's always just seemed to me a psychological defense mechanism more than a rational argument. But yeah I guess you're right that Americans probably won't go on strike because they're happy enough. I can't really understand why they're happy enough, but I guess they are.
oneepic 5y ago
So what? Can't you just pay at the time of the visit and then file a claim? Your insurance should become retroactively available.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  That works if you have thousands of dollars available to cover the bills until you get reimbursed.
  - kenjackson 5y ago
    But, at least for the hospitals and doctor's I work with, they all have zero interest payment plans. It is extra work to deal with, but drastically reduces the cash outlay.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    It is not uncommon for paperwork to be delayed when switching insurers. I've had it happen at previous employers. The normal course of action in this circumstance is that you pay the bill after your insurance paperwork is sorted out. If you go to the hospital and didn't know that your insurance expired, you probably won't even see a bill for a month, after the hospital gets the denied claim from your previous insurer. At which point, you'll give them the updated information, and they'll file the claim with the new insurer.
  - woobar 5y ago
    Usually the first bill arrives 30+ days after the service. And by the time you get final notice to pay it will be 6-12 mos after the first bill. Not defending Intuit or MC here, but this situation is not exactly as it is painted in that Tweet. Considering there were no more publicity about this since tweet date (November 2021), it wasn't a big deal.
    - kccqzy 5y ago
      I've never experienced this idea of paying a provider 30+ days after the service. I've seen dentists, optometrists, PCPs, and whatever specialists PCPs have referred me to. If they determine that insurance won't cover 100%, I must pay the remainder to get any service at all. Sometimes I pay after the service is done but before leaving the premises; sometimes I must pay before service is rendered. So how do I get that 30-day+ float?
TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
I don't know ... this guy seems to have no knowledge of how complicated transferring employee benefits between organizations is. Its not so simple as just hitting a switch. The whole system conspires to fuck over individuals and small companies. Its nearly impossible to smoothly transition benefits during an acquisitions unless you get things exactly right ... or the acquirer is someone like Google that has an endless pool of money and just throws money at the problem to avoid a PR issue. As for this guy complaining about his acquisition bonus. Why didn't he negotiate for stock when he was hired? I have always negotiated for a lower salary and more stock, as I wish for the lottery ticket and potential upside. If he wanted to trade off cash for stock, he could have done that. And it that was not on offer at Mailchimp then why didn't he go work somewhere else? Seems like they had some inducement, right? Or did he not understand the terms of his employment. People are so TERRORIZED by the fact that they are only paid the amount they negotiated in their employment contract. YES, capitalism sucks if you just naively enter into employment without understanding what the compensation entails. What would you like instead? Employment at a Public Sector Unit? I can assure you PSUs suck BAD for engineers. My father and uncles worked at PSUs before immigrating to the US and improving their fortunes 20X to 50X (no exaggeration).
- ezrast 5y ago
  If employees shouldn't complain about not receiving benefits they didn't negotiate for, surely they should get to complain about not receiving benefits they did negotiate for. Knowing anything about benefits administration is not the employee's job and it being "complicated" is not remotely their problem. If the terms of MailChimp's acquisition were incompatible with the terms of its employment agreements, then it shouldn't have agreed to the acquisition. Or it could make an honest attempt at recompense such as through bonuses. But they don't get to both eat and have their cake.
  - TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
    I agree with that. But employment is generally at-will in tech. Not fixed-term. Would he prefer to be terminated? When you go from one company to another there's a change in benefits. He could have COBRA for a period of time and then be back on the payroll of the acquiring company. That's no better.
nine_zeros 5y ago
Why can't health insurance be like car insurance again? Why can't individuals negotiate premiums? Why can't individuals switch to another insurance provider at any time? Why can't insurance providers cover 100% over anything prescribed by medical practioners? Seriously, why does any medical treatment in America have to be so opaque and stressful? We are regressing as a society if life is not becoming easier.
floatinglotus 5y ago
There is no depth to shoddy crappy business practices at Intuit. Seriously, this is an evil company.
adapteva 5y ago
Family plan health insurance premiums on open market is $33K/year in New England (US). With group plans that goes down to $28K/year. A full time employee at $15/hr is $30k/year. The US healthcare system is fundamentally broken...
- cromd 5y ago
  Is that for a very large family? Or maybe I don't know what "family plan" means exactly. I just got a plan on my own, not far from New England. I am paying about $450 per person per month, and I thought it was the best plan listed from the provider. As of this morning's doctor visit, however, I do agree - much is broken!
  - adapteva 5y ago
    That sounds about right. Pricing varies by state and plan, but at 5-6 people you get to $2-3K / month.
jdavis703 5y ago
> The employees Business Insider spoke with said they would be covered retroactively only once the paperwork was finalized, which left them on the hook to pay upfront fees. This seems like many responses on HN are over reacting. Employees are not on the hook for previously insured medical expenses. Almost all medical offices are happy to work with patients if the situation is explained before hand. For example my HMO has printed signs at every intake counter reading “Can’t pay? Call this number to discuss payment options.” This situation sucks, but it’s really not much different from forgetting your insurance number and needing the front desk to front you the copay or deductible.
no_wizard 5y ago
This is from 2021, I wonder what the state of this situation is now. Have they actually managed to smooth the transition or is it still a bad deal for Mailchimp employees that stayed on post merger?
- ng_xp 5y ago
  Heard that most of them quit
andrew_ 5y ago
Another vapid Twitter thread making it to the front page by pulling on emotional strings. Personally, I'd like to see some proof of the claim before entertaining it.
fnordpiglet 5y ago
Spam lords turn out to be slime balls. Shocking.
bArray 5y ago
Your real problem is this: > In the US, your health insurance is tied to your job. Why on earth is it that it doesn't matter which party gets elected, you can't seem to get universal health care? Pick California for example, it's a rich state with a massive homelessness problem. What do the homeless mostly suffer from? Addiction and mental health. Living in Europe and not having to worry about any kind of random health issue is great. If you have some problem, you get it seen to as soon as possible and not worry about whatever it may cost. As an employer things are simpler too, and in the long run, likely cheaper. It just seems incredibly backwards and I'm not sure it really actually serves anybody. If you're big Pharma, you want your patients to live longer, as they'll get older and have more issues that you can sell products for. If they lose their job, that's lost income.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > What do the homeless mostly suffer from? Not having a home.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - xeromal 5y ago
    People love conflating people living on the streets as just homeless, but the approach to solve the problem really requires two solutions. The first is to provide housing for the people mentally capable of taking care of themselves. The rest require either public housing in a facility that can take care of them (abandoned mentally ill) or rehab programs that will hopefully help addicts recover and reestablish themselves. The mentally ill and addicts will not be able to function with just free housing.
  - bArray 5y ago
    > > What do the homeless mostly suffer from? > Not having a home. There are typically quite some homeless programs running, but many get rejected for not abiding by the rules they (understandably) must have, i.e. don't be violent or do drugs. It's not enough to give these people a home, you must also address the reason they are homeless.
neya 5y ago
"Known evil company treats its workers like crap" Not really surprised. Both Intuit and MailChimp have been carcinogenic to their customers, vendors and employees for ages now. People should strike and/or complain to their local authorities especially when stuff like this is usually put out black and white in their employment contracts. It will be far more effective than just lashing out on Twitter.
pyuser583 5y ago
I’ve been in this spot - a change in ownership, lapse in insurance, and having to cover it yourself until new insurance is retroactively applied. It sucks. But it’s far from the worst pitfall of our system.
Dave3of5 5y ago
Looks like very old news. Although I would say that mailchimp as a company never looked employee friendly so at least for me it's no surprise. Intuit is definitely not an employee friendly company. My advice is if you're still working for them find a new job.
cracrecry 5y ago
You always pay out of your pocket. The concept that you make (bad bad) companies pay out of their (outrageous) profit is a delusion. Companies just take part of your salary and with that they pay medical cost. I actually prefer paying it myself and having this thing called "free market" or competence work for me. But in places like the US the system is extremely corrupt and designed to make it impossible for the free market to exist. This is inherited by the political system making mandatory for business to handle that instead of individuals. In other countries you have things like mutuality organizations of people to provide healthcare, much much better and cheaper that what I see in the US.
- endymi0n 5y ago
  There is never a free market in health care. > […] As I lie unconscious under a bus, I am in no position to shop for the best provider of ambulance services at the most reasonable price. All personal volition is lost. Whatever happens next, it will not be a market transaction. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/07/there-is-never-a-free-market-in-health-care/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/07/there-is-n...
  - ipnon 5y ago
    A free market of treatment options is feasible, but not a free market of insurance coverage. It's not really insurance if the unfortunate event is guaranteed to occur (has anyone in history been documented as never falling I'll?). The buyers have no option.
  - tikkabhuna 5y ago
    This is what I love about the UK system. - NHS takes care of emergencies. There is no stress of payment in these situations. - I have private medical insurance through work. Its done by salary sacrifice so I can choose to take the money instead. - I can buy private medical insurance separately. Providers like Vitality[1] offer things like Apple Watches and discount gym membership. Private medical insurance is generally quite cheap (Vitality just quoted me £40/month) as emergency care is done by the NHS. - You can use private healthcare to speed up things that might take a while or you might not get an NHS referral for. Of course there's some problems with the NHS in terms of wait times, but I believe that's more of an issue of funding. In the UK I feel like I have choice that won't break the bank and I'm also not going to die because I can't pay. [1] https://www.vitality.co.uk/rewards/partners/active-rewards/apple-watch/ https://www.vitality.co.uk/rewards/partners/active-rewards/a...
chirau 5y ago
I'm single, but how does employer provided health insurance work if both partners are provided it by their workplaces?
- joshgachnang 5y ago
  I just set up insurance for our startup. There are 4 possible plans: employee, employee + spouse, employee + dependents, employee + family. If you both get good insurance and low premiums, whoever gets the better would probably pick employee + dependents and your spouse use their employer’s.
x13 5y ago
fuck intuit

381 points by luu 5y ago

ericbarrett 5y ago

Tweet is dated November 2021.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

obi1kenobi 5y ago

Interesting detail I wasn't familiar with, and very unfortunate. I know I wouldn't have been happy to be put in that situation :( It was published on Nov 11, 2021 so perhaps consider a (2021) tag in the submission title?

PaywallBuster 5y ago

Mr Derrick seems to have gotten triggered by all this, which looks nothing but the unfortunate side effects of the US tax/legal system, and in that regard I'd guess it occurs often enough. In the other hand consider that Mailchimp employees probably fared much better working on a digital all online product and getting their above average salaries than the average person, who actually lost their jobs, savings and health insurance due to covid

bartvk 5y ago
Is it really the unfortunate side effect of the US tag/legal system? As an outsider (from Europe), it seems that Intuit was able to take over Mailchimp, but was not able to smoothly transition their new employees from one insurer to another.

imglorp 5y ago

Why is health insurance tied to employer, again? Is there a reason that should continue?

lkxijlewlf 5y ago
Right? I believe that practice should be banned. There's really NO reason for it now.
- briffle 5y ago
  Or at least made optional. Do you want our health insurance plan, or an extra $1500/month to find your own on the open market would be an interesting way of looking at it. But either way, both your employer and your cost for health insurance should show up on everyone's pay statements. Most have no idea what their employer pays for insurance.
fennecfoxen 5y ago
Historical and tax reasons. It started back in the era of WWII wage controls. It continued to be an okay way to do group insurance without facing major problems with adverse selection. Being able to pay for it with a pre-tax payrolld eduction is the other big reason it thrived. Given the mandates on insurance there are some reasons it should continue, but they are not really good reasons.
- zamalek 5y ago
  > some reasons it should continue, but they are not really good reasons. Many of those reasons are legislature that allows insurance companies to do/demand things that they really shouldn't be able to. Even if the goal isn't public healthcare, America still needs a major healthcare insurance restructuring.
  - rhacker 5y ago
    I think that should look like this: HMO style access for all - automatically. Rebate if you decide to up it with PPO style insurance (or beyond). So you get 200 per month off taxes to pay towards your own insurance. Also, get it out of the employers hands - as in make it illegal to offer any benefits and let the employee get paid 100% of their salary instead. Also make it so that employers can't legally collect taxes without consent.

oofabz 5y ago

I wish employers did not provide health insurance, even though I have a chronic medical condition. The choices of plans offered by companies is far, far smaller than the choices available to me on the open market. I don't want to have to find new health insurance if my employment situation changes, possibly leaving me with a gap in coverage. The expectation that employer-provided benefits are at no cost to the employee is a fallacy - if companies did not offer health care as a perk, they would be able to offer higher salaries instead. The only reason American employers are in the business of offering health insurance is because they get a federal tax break. This makes health insurance cheaper to the employer than to individuals. Given this, if my employer stopped offering insurance, they couldn't increase my salary enough for me to purchase the same plan myself. I think this is unfair - I would like to get the same tax break myself, or at least eliminate the tax break altogether so I am on an even playing field with businesses. This would allow me to purchase my own health insurance at rates comparable to what I'm offered at work. Considering the tax situation, it's curious that Intuit would not choose to take this tax break. It seems like a short term move that allows them to cut costs while exploiting the economic stickiness of employment. This move makes them less competitive for employees in the labor market, but that only affects them in the long term. In the short term, the employees they have will be hesistant and slow to find new jobs.

NoblePublius 5y ago
There is no “tax break.” It’s unlawful for me not to buy health Insurance for my employees (more than 50) and you aren’t allowed to shop the open market if you work for me. Average cost per employee is $1150 this year (up about 11% over last year). Thanks Obama.
- synaesthesisx 5y ago
  Dude $1150 per employee is literally nothing. That's less than $100/month, per employee, for health insurance. Individuals should still have an option to choose a plan on the open market if they desire, but they're highly unlikely to find a plan for $100/month.
  - 5y ago

duxup 5y ago

> until their health insurance retroactively becomes available I feel like the title is missing that bit. Doesn’t make it ok, but the situation is dramatically different with even the limitations of a single tweet compared to the title.

brimble 5y ago
It's still asking employees to float their enormous mega-corp employer potentially thousands of dollars (each) in short-term loans.
- nightski 5y ago
  It's more like floating the insurance company. The employer would never directly pay these things.
  - epall 5y ago
    Most employers in the U.S. over about 1,000 employees are “self-insured”, meaning they hire the insurance company for the network and administration, but the company actually does directly pay out claims. At over 1k employees, I expect MailChimp was already self-insuring, and Intuit definitely does.
    - bradly 5y ago
      Intuit is indeed self-insured.
luu 5y ago
If you can suggest an edit that will fit within HN's title length limit that conveys the sentiment of the entire tweet, please feel free to do so. Appending enough of the missing text to convey anything useful violates the limit, but maybe the title could be compressed in another way. I don't think I can edit the title anymore, but one of the mods can edit it.
- 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

What do you expect from a company whose business is spamming?

endisneigh 5y ago

What I don't get is why can't someone, say, one of us, pool together our own insurance that exists outside the employer?

dangrossman 5y ago
Insurance does exist outside the employer. I've been self-employed all my life, so I've been purchasing my own insurance without an employer for about 20 years. I used to go directly to a company like Aetna or Blue Shield to buy my coverage, now I go to healthcare.gov once a year to pick a plan.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  The gap here is that employer paid plans are subsidized by the employer, who uses them as a tax write off, making un-subsidized plans much more expensive in comparison
  - dangrossman 5y ago
    True. If you're self-employed, your health insurance premiums are personally tax deductible. If you're not and you make up to 400% of the federal poverty level, the government subsidizes marketplace plans for you similar to an employer. It's not just the self-employed that buy their own insurance, but all the millions of hourly employees that aren't offered healthcare benefits through their employer(s) either.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I have no tax knowledge at all, but if you were to create a pass through corporation who purchased the health insurance on the behalf of its members, could you deduct said fees and then pass the savings onto the members the following years? I guess the overhead of setting up such an organization plus the fact that said corporation wouldn't actually have any revenue are big issues.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago

bpodgursky 5y ago

This happens all the time when people switch insurance or go onto COBRA. You get retroactively covered for some period after your new plan becomes active. It doesn't end up with people paying tens of thousands out of pocket, people just don't pay the bills that come in during that period, and kick them to insurance later. It sucks but is not really uncommon or possibly even something Intuit has a ton of control over.

sc68cal 5y ago
How many people realistically go into COBRA. Have you seen the premiums? For family coverage it can easily be thousands per month.
- toast0 5y ago
  COBRA wasn't that far off of marketplace prices for me. If I thought I'd use the better coverage/better benefits during the COBRA period, and I was confident my former employer would inform COBRA users of issues at least as well as they did employees, I might have considered it. IIUC, COBRA rates are more or less the total employee and employer rate, maybe plus a limited administration fee? Also, I don't think COBRA pricing varies by age, but marketplace plans do, so if my spouse or I were older, COBRA might have been a good deal. All that said, I think most people switching jobs keep the COBRA paperwork in case something big happens before they get new coverage in place. There's a grace period on the first payment, if you need coverage, you can pay until the grace period and get retroactive coverage; if you don't need coverage, don't pay. Some people even prepare the payment but leave instructions to send it in if they're incapacitated.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

Twitter is not a blogging platform and makes for bad HN stories. You don't get the full picture or context and they aren't updated later. https://slashdot.org/story/21/11/11/1634237/intuit-slashes-pay-and-cuts-health-benefits-of-mailchimp-employees https://slashdot.org/story/21/11/11/1634237/intuit-slashes-p... https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-employees-shocked-when-health-benefits-ended-at-intuit-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-employees-shocked-...

nulbyte 5y ago
The tweet definitely leaves a lot out. My initial impression was, "that sounds reasonable." I got insurance retroactive to my hire date when I switched jobs last, but it took time for paperwork to be processed, so of course I would pay up front before then. But the article reads more like the sellers dropped the ball by cutting the insurance without ensuring their former employees were properly taken care of. There is plenty of blame to lay at Intuit's feet, but it's not like the former owners of Mailchimp didn't know what everyone else knows. Sounds like they just wanted some quick cash and everything else was someone else's problem.
- lifeplusplus 5y ago
  Didn't MailChimp employees got bad deal because they had no equity to begin with of my memory serves me right
  - beckler 5y ago
    Correct, it was entirely owned by the founders.
jlmorton 5y ago
On the other hand, Business Insider has a giant paywall that doesn't let you view anything at all, and Slashdot links to Business Insider.

cudgy 5y ago

Yet another reason for medical care to have nothing to do with your employer … thank Obama for sealing that deal with the ACA / Big Insurance Company Handout. Good luck severing the connection.

anonymousisme 5y ago
Agree. Creating corporate sovereignty for insurance companies just re-enforces government interference in a free economy. As a result of the interference, health providers have continuously raised their prices far beyond what anybody would pay in a free market. If nobody had insurance, what do you suppose would happen to health care costs? Answer: They would adjust to what the market will bear.
- ihumanable 5y ago
  Someone about to die from a medical episode will bear a surprising amount to not die.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
If you researched the negotiations that led to the ACA, you would see that the public option was favored by Obama, but had to be nixed to get a few holdout senators on board. You can thank the Obama admin for at least getting rid of pre existing conditions clauses and for out of pocket maximums, which was more progress that anyone has made before or after.
- cudgy 5y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/why-obama-dropped-the-public-option/346546/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/why-oba... This article presents your viewpoint along with quite a few others which mostly point toward Obama’s ineffectiveness and lack of effort toward accomplishing this while having a clear Democrat majority in both houses. No surprise though as Obama era is not the only failure to move toward single payer … look at what California managed to accomplish with a vast majority of liberal Democrats a couple months ago … https://m.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2022/02/01/why-single-payer-died-in-the-california-legislature-again https://m.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2022/02/01...

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

The worse a company treats its employees, the less loyal they will be, and the more likely it is that one of them decides to earn money by abusing their insider access, either out of greed or despair. Like when someone at Mailchimp sold out the users of various Mailchimp customers to criminals (https://twitter.com/Trezor/status/1510558771944333312 https://twitter.com/Trezor/status/1510558771944333312).

twobitshifter 5y ago
The thing is that pre-acquisition mailchimp was an example of a place tech employees loved to work but not for the equity. The founders built a strong internal culture of private ownership and then bailed for a payday. If any other company sold out and employees got short changed, it wouldn’t make the news. https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-... > When employees were recruited to work at Mailchimp there was a common refrain from hiring managers: No, you are not going to get equity, but you will get to be part of a scrappy company that fights for the little guy and we will never be acquired or go public.

cwkoss 5y ago

Mailchimp workers should go on strike until their healthcare coverage is properly functioning

inopinatus 5y ago
One might equally suggest that all American workers should go on strike until their healthcare system is properly functioning.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kieselguhr_kid 5y ago
  It's not the worst idea
- HigherPlain 5y ago
  Most americans are happy with their employee health plan. Why would they go on strike?
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    > Most americans are happy with their employee health plan. Why would they go on strike? I'm not sure if your claim about most Americans being happy with their healthcare is right or wrong, but that doesn't mean it can't be significantly improved nor that it compares that well internationally: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2071992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2071992/ Personally I'd choose the Swedish system over the American system any day. The US healthcare system is probably one of the main things giving me pause about moving back to the US actually. edit: Americans perception of their healthcare is kind of interesting actually: https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-health-costs-new-high.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-h... The US has long spent much more per capita than the rest of the world and has had worse outcomes than most (all?) comparable nations. Americans are good at rationalizing away this sort of thing ("we can't have better healthcare because we're fat"), but that's always just seemed to me a psychological defense mechanism more than a rational argument. But yeah I guess you're right that Americans probably won't go on strike because they're happy enough. I can't really understand why they're happy enough, but I guess they are.

oneepic 5y ago

So what? Can't you just pay at the time of the visit and then file a claim? Your insurance should become retroactively available.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
That works if you have thousands of dollars available to cover the bills until you get reimbursed.
- kenjackson 5y ago
  But, at least for the hospitals and doctor's I work with, they all have zero interest payment plans. It is extra work to deal with, but drastically reduces the cash outlay.
- kube-system 5y ago
  It is not uncommon for paperwork to be delayed when switching insurers. I've had it happen at previous employers. The normal course of action in this circumstance is that you pay the bill after your insurance paperwork is sorted out. If you go to the hospital and didn't know that your insurance expired, you probably won't even see a bill for a month, after the hospital gets the denied claim from your previous insurer. At which point, you'll give them the updated information, and they'll file the claim with the new insurer.
- woobar 5y ago
  Usually the first bill arrives 30+ days after the service. And by the time you get final notice to pay it will be 6-12 mos after the first bill. Not defending Intuit or MC here, but this situation is not exactly as it is painted in that Tweet. Considering there were no more publicity about this since tweet date (November 2021), it wasn't a big deal.
  - kccqzy 5y ago
    I've never experienced this idea of paying a provider 30+ days after the service. I've seen dentists, optometrists, PCPs, and whatever specialists PCPs have referred me to. If they determine that insurance won't cover 100%, I must pay the remainder to get any service at all. Sometimes I pay after the service is done but before leaving the premises; sometimes I must pay before service is rendered. So how do I get that 30-day+ float?

TheMagicHorsey 5y ago

I don't know ... this guy seems to have no knowledge of how complicated transferring employee benefits between organizations is. Its not so simple as just hitting a switch. The whole system conspires to fuck over individuals and small companies. Its nearly impossible to smoothly transition benefits during an acquisitions unless you get things exactly right ... or the acquirer is someone like Google that has an endless pool of money and just throws money at the problem to avoid a PR issue. As for this guy complaining about his acquisition bonus. Why didn't he negotiate for stock when he was hired? I have always negotiated for a lower salary and more stock, as I wish for the lottery ticket and potential upside. If he wanted to trade off cash for stock, he could have done that. And it that was not on offer at Mailchimp then why didn't he go work somewhere else? Seems like they had some inducement, right? Or did he not understand the terms of his employment. People are so TERRORIZED by the fact that they are only paid the amount they negotiated in their employment contract. YES, capitalism sucks if you just naively enter into employment without understanding what the compensation entails. What would you like instead? Employment at a Public Sector Unit? I can assure you PSUs suck BAD for engineers. My father and uncles worked at PSUs before immigrating to the US and improving their fortunes 20X to 50X (no exaggeration).

ezrast 5y ago
If employees shouldn't complain about not receiving benefits they didn't negotiate for, surely they should get to complain about not receiving benefits they did negotiate for. Knowing anything about benefits administration is not the employee's job and it being "complicated" is not remotely their problem. If the terms of MailChimp's acquisition were incompatible with the terms of its employment agreements, then it shouldn't have agreed to the acquisition. Or it could make an honest attempt at recompense such as through bonuses. But they don't get to both eat and have their cake.
- TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
  I agree with that. But employment is generally at-will in tech. Not fixed-term. Would he prefer to be terminated? When you go from one company to another there's a change in benefits. He could have COBRA for a period of time and then be back on the payroll of the acquiring company. That's no better.

nine_zeros 5y ago

Why can't health insurance be like car insurance again? Why can't individuals negotiate premiums? Why can't individuals switch to another insurance provider at any time? Why can't insurance providers cover 100% over anything prescribed by medical practioners? Seriously, why does any medical treatment in America have to be so opaque and stressful? We are regressing as a society if life is not becoming easier.

floatinglotus 5y ago

There is no depth to shoddy crappy business practices at Intuit. Seriously, this is an evil company.

adapteva 5y ago

Family plan health insurance premiums on open market is $33K/year in New England (US). With group plans that goes down to $28K/year. A full time employee at $15/hr is $30k/year. The US healthcare system is fundamentally broken...

cromd 5y ago
Is that for a very large family? Or maybe I don't know what "family plan" means exactly. I just got a plan on my own, not far from New England. I am paying about $450 per person per month, and I thought it was the best plan listed from the provider. As of this morning's doctor visit, however, I do agree - much is broken!
- adapteva 5y ago
  That sounds about right. Pricing varies by state and plan, but at 5-6 people you get to $2-3K / month.

jdavis703 5y ago

> The employees Business Insider spoke with said they would be covered retroactively only once the paperwork was finalized, which left them on the hook to pay upfront fees. This seems like many responses on HN are over reacting. Employees are not on the hook for previously insured medical expenses. Almost all medical offices are happy to work with patients if the situation is explained before hand. For example my HMO has printed signs at every intake counter reading “Can’t pay? Call this number to discuss payment options.” This situation sucks, but it’s really not much different from forgetting your insurance number and needing the front desk to front you the copay or deductible.

no_wizard 5y ago

This is from 2021, I wonder what the state of this situation is now. Have they actually managed to smooth the transition or is it still a bad deal for Mailchimp employees that stayed on post merger?

ng_xp 5y ago
Heard that most of them quit

andrew_ 5y ago

Another vapid Twitter thread making it to the front page by pulling on emotional strings. Personally, I'd like to see some proof of the claim before entertaining it.

fnordpiglet 5y ago

Spam lords turn out to be slime balls. Shocking.

bArray 5y ago

Your real problem is this: > In the US, your health insurance is tied to your job. Why on earth is it that it doesn't matter which party gets elected, you can't seem to get universal health care? Pick California for example, it's a rich state with a massive homelessness problem. What do the homeless mostly suffer from? Addiction and mental health. Living in Europe and not having to worry about any kind of random health issue is great. If you have some problem, you get it seen to as soon as possible and not worry about whatever it may cost. As an employer things are simpler too, and in the long run, likely cheaper. It just seems incredibly backwards and I'm not sure it really actually serves anybody. If you're big Pharma, you want your patients to live longer, as they'll get older and have more issues that you can sell products for. If they lose their job, that's lost income.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> What do the homeless mostly suffer from? Not having a home.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- xeromal 5y ago
  People love conflating people living on the streets as just homeless, but the approach to solve the problem really requires two solutions. The first is to provide housing for the people mentally capable of taking care of themselves. The rest require either public housing in a facility that can take care of them (abandoned mentally ill) or rehab programs that will hopefully help addicts recover and reestablish themselves. The mentally ill and addicts will not be able to function with just free housing.
- bArray 5y ago
  > > What do the homeless mostly suffer from? > Not having a home. There are typically quite some homeless programs running, but many get rejected for not abiding by the rules they (understandably) must have, i.e. don't be violent or do drugs. It's not enough to give these people a home, you must also address the reason they are homeless.

neya 5y ago

"Known evil company treats its workers like crap" Not really surprised. Both Intuit and MailChimp have been carcinogenic to their customers, vendors and employees for ages now. People should strike and/or complain to their local authorities especially when stuff like this is usually put out black and white in their employment contracts. It will be far more effective than just lashing out on Twitter.

pyuser583 5y ago

I’ve been in this spot - a change in ownership, lapse in insurance, and having to cover it yourself until new insurance is retroactively applied. It sucks. But it’s far from the worst pitfall of our system.

Dave3of5 5y ago

Looks like very old news. Although I would say that mailchimp as a company never looked employee friendly so at least for me it's no surprise. Intuit is definitely not an employee friendly company. My advice is if you're still working for them find a new job.

cracrecry 5y ago

You always pay out of your pocket. The concept that you make (bad bad) companies pay out of their (outrageous) profit is a delusion. Companies just take part of your salary and with that they pay medical cost. I actually prefer paying it myself and having this thing called "free market" or competence work for me. But in places like the US the system is extremely corrupt and designed to make it impossible for the free market to exist. This is inherited by the political system making mandatory for business to handle that instead of individuals. In other countries you have things like mutuality organizations of people to provide healthcare, much much better and cheaper that what I see in the US.

endymi0n 5y ago
There is never a free market in health care. > […] As I lie unconscious under a bus, I am in no position to shop for the best provider of ambulance services at the most reasonable price. All personal volition is lost. Whatever happens next, it will not be a market transaction. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/07/there-is-never-a-free-market-in-health-care/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/07/there-is-n...
- ipnon 5y ago
  A free market of treatment options is feasible, but not a free market of insurance coverage. It's not really insurance if the unfortunate event is guaranteed to occur (has anyone in history been documented as never falling I'll?). The buyers have no option.
- tikkabhuna 5y ago
  This is what I love about the UK system. - NHS takes care of emergencies. There is no stress of payment in these situations. - I have private medical insurance through work. Its done by salary sacrifice so I can choose to take the money instead. - I can buy private medical insurance separately. Providers like Vitality[1] offer things like Apple Watches and discount gym membership. Private medical insurance is generally quite cheap (Vitality just quoted me £40/month) as emergency care is done by the NHS. - You can use private healthcare to speed up things that might take a while or you might not get an NHS referral for. Of course there's some problems with the NHS in terms of wait times, but I believe that's more of an issue of funding. In the UK I feel like I have choice that won't break the bank and I'm also not going to die because I can't pay. [1] https://www.vitality.co.uk/rewards/partners/active-rewards/apple-watch/ https://www.vitality.co.uk/rewards/partners/active-rewards/a...

chirau 5y ago

I'm single, but how does employer provided health insurance work if both partners are provided it by their workplaces?

joshgachnang 5y ago
I just set up insurance for our startup. There are 4 possible plans: employee, employee + spouse, employee + dependents, employee + family. If you both get good insurance and low premiums, whoever gets the better would probably pick employee + dependents and your spouse use their employer’s.

x13 5y ago

fuck intuit