The Buffalo News is reporting that the Niagara Falls, N.Y., city government will pay workers $9,083 per year not to take up health insurance.
Dan Herbeck and Charlie Specht, reporters at the newspaper, found that many public employers will pay employees to stay out of the health plan but that the Niagara Falls payment appears to be relatively high for the upstate New York region.
The benefits opt-out program costs the city about $420,000 per year. This year, about 45 workers are collecting opt-out payments.
Workers have to show they have other health insurance to collect the payments.
The reporters found some municipalities in their area pay workers just $1,000 to $1,200 to opt out.
If the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) takes effect on schedule and works as expected, it could create what amounts to a big new opt-out program at many employers, as some employers decide to drop health coverage, pay modest penalties to the federal government, and send employees out to buy coverage through the new health insurance exchanges PPACA is supposed to set up.
PPACA is supposed to require health insurers to sell individual coverage on a guaranteed-issue, mostly community-rated basis, which should make individual coverage easier to get than it is today. But PPACA does nothing to limit the price of health coverage, and workers who earn more than 400% of the federal poverty level and get no benefit from PPACA health insurance purchase tax subsidies will have to pay the full tab for individual coverage.
THEY HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY
Spring Consulting Group L.L.C., Boston, has won two new insurance funding patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The firm has obtained U.S. Patent number 8,060,384 and number 8,060,387 for strategies for using captive insurance companies to provide life insurance or health insurance for a company's employees.
The captive strategies could cut benefits costs as much as 30%, Spring says.
Karin Landry, a Spring managing partner, is listed as the inventor.
The patent with the number ending with 384 describes a strategy for using a captive to fund life insurance benefits.
The other patent, which has a number ending with 387, describes a strategy for funding benefits by "maintaining assets in the insurance program that includes an employer or employee owned trust account and at least one life insurance contract or non-cancelable accident and health insurance contract obtained directly or indirectly from a captive insurance company," according to the patent abstract.
The life insurance contract or non-cancelable accident and health insurance contract is purchased with assets from the trust account and the captive insurance company is at least partially owned by the employer. When paying or reimbursing benefits, the employer or the trust may pay the benefit and if the employer pays the benefit, the trust may reimburse the employer."
OTHER HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS
The hot benefits question in our office is whether Summit Business Media should offer voluntary pet health insurance.
My question: Why is that considered property-casualty insurance? But, on the other hand, if we redefined pet insurance as a kind of personal health insurance, would that kind of treatment only to coverage for dogs and cats, or for all small mammals, or all mammals? And what about fish and parakeets?
I think dogs and cats are people, too, but I'm not sure about the reptiles.
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