Why your boss is dumping your wife
By denying coverage to spouses, employers not only save the annual premiums, but also the new fees that went into effect as part of the Affordable Care Act. This year, companies have to pay $1 or $2 “per life” covered on their plans, a sum that jumps to $65 in 2014. And health law guidelines proposed recently mandate coverage of employees’ dependent children (up to age 26), but husbands and wives are optional. “The question about whether it’s obligatory to cover the family of the employee is being thought through more than ever before,” says Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health. See: When your boss doesn’t trust your doctor
While surcharges for spousal coverage are more common, last year, 6% of large employers excluded spouses, up from 5% in 2010, as did 4% of huge companies with at least 20,000 employees, twice as many as in 2010, according to human resources firm Mercer. These “spousal carve-outs,” or “working spouse provisions,” generally prohibit only people who could get coverage through their own job from enrolling in their spouse’s plan.
Such exclusions barely existed three years ago, but experts expect an increasing number of employers to adopt them: “That’s the next step,” Darling says. HMS, a company that audits plans for employers, estimates that nearly a third of companies might have such policies now. Holdouts say they feel under pressure to follow suit. “We’re the last domino,” says Duke Bennett, mayor of Terre Haute, Ind., which is instituting a spousal carve-out for the city’s health plan, effective July 2013, after nearly all major employers in the area dropped spouses.
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Every segment of society will suffer from Obama’s prized pig.
fogw on February 23, 2013 at 10:50 AM
WSJ assuming only men have jobs; MSNBC melts down with “WSJ war on women” expose`
BobMbx on February 23, 2013 at 10:55 AM
I mis-read. Thought it said humping.
Dingbat63 on February 23, 2013 at 11:06 AM
Nancy Pelosi may not have read the bill, but we’re sure as hell finding out what’s in it.
ironbill on February 23, 2013 at 11:07 AM
My employer covered my portion of my health insurance, but anything over that (for the rest of my family) comes out of my paycheck.
Of course, one could say that the part he pays for me also comes out of my paycheck, but that is a different argument.
Count to 10 on February 23, 2013 at 11:24 AM
I’d sure like to dump some people, starting with the moronic Pelosi “have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” and her equally clueless boss, along with more than half of Congress. Most of them don’t do the job they were elected to do (Senate must pass a budget every year by law – none yet from Reid). They are all traitorous.
IrishEyes on February 23, 2013 at 11:27 AM
Behold, the glory of Socialism!
Oil Can on February 23, 2013 at 11:30 AM
Surely there’s an exemption for gheys and illegal immigrants.
Xavier on February 23, 2013 at 11:45 AM
So without spousal insurance coverage to worry about, hiring a man would probably produce a higher return on investment since they don’t get pregnant and consume less health care. We reap what we sow. Elections have meaning.
rhombus on February 23, 2013 at 11:48 AM
So true – no birth control, no abortion, no pregnancy, no estrogen treatment. Plus no maternity leave.
katiejane on February 23, 2013 at 12:01 PM
This happened at my company this year. Its more than $100 a month. I still can’t believe that Pelosi comment didn’t stop O’care in its tracks. How many people are stupid enough to sign a contract without knowing what it means to them. Oh nevermind…
long dogs on February 23, 2013 at 12:07 PM
Did Dems build in a provision authorizing class-action suits against employers who drop coverage of spouses and other dependents?
BuckeyeSam on February 23, 2013 at 12:08 PM
And that’s something to think about if you’re going on a job interview. Even better if you have no kids.
Dack Thrombosis on February 23, 2013 at 12:13 PM
You mean the morons who incurred mortgage indebtedness without understanding the terms of their obligations, thus precipitating the housing bubble, the financial crisis, the election of Obama, the enactment of Obamacare, the enactment of Dodd-Frank, the near mortally wounding of our economy, and the media meme that the GOP and free markets caused all of our current problems?
You mean those idiots?
BuckeyeSam on February 23, 2013 at 12:13 PM
You mean the morons who incurred mortgage indebtedness without understanding the terms of their obligations, thus precipitating the housing bubble, the financial crisis, the election of Obama, the enactment of Obamacare, the enactment of Dodd-Frank, the near mortally wounding of our economy, and the media meme that the GOP and free markets caused all of our current problems?
You mean those idiots?
BuckeyeSam on February 23, 2013 at 12:13 PM
Sadly yes.
long dogs on February 23, 2013 at 12:23 PM
This is just horrible, and I blame not just Obama but a culture that has decided wives are supposed to shift for themselves within marriage, as if they were some sort of temporary roomate with benefits.
The reduction of marriage to essentially a shared address is in part because the relationship has been divorced from it’s sociological purpose of managing biological realities so that women are protected and children raised with stability and without dependence on government “charity.”
Marriage is now very nearly a nothing. Instead we are all to be brides of the state.
I’ve never thought an employer should have such a stranglehold on group insurance; it is almost an accident that most plans have been provided by employers; most of you already know how that came about.
You also know how latter day entitlement programs have distorted the payouts and payment structure of private insurance.
The sensible thing would have been to restore the relationship between the true consumers of health care and insurers. It would have made sense to make health care savings accounts and to give families full deductions for purchase of health insurance, and to change fica structure so that employers can pay wages instead.
Instead of offering individual families the same tax breaks that employers heretofore had for purchase of insurance, the government is now reducing tax breaks employers get while also not providing them to individuals.
Any plan should have to allow for coverage of any nuclear family member. For a spouse not to be treated as a true member of the family, and dependent, reflects a deep shift in the values of the country and it means the destruction of the family, the end of husband and wife. Welcome to your brave new world.
SarahW on February 23, 2013 at 1:22 PM