I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
McDonald’s could drop health insurance for tens of thousands of its workers across the nation if the federal government doesn’t relax a rule set to take effect in coming months, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The issue revolves around a new rule in the federal health care law that requires health plans to spend the vast majority of its revenue from policy premiums on health care vs. administrative costs, or face penalties.
The Journal captures the fast food chain’s challenge succinctly in a couple of paragraphs high in the story.
“A senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care,” according to the Journal story.
That’s because the so-called “mini-med plans” McDonald’s offers workers at 10,500 U.S. locations requires a high degree of administrative costs “owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims,” the Journal reporter explains.
It’s unclear from the Journal story if any of the McDonald’s in New Mexico might be affected. But it stands to reason that some might.
Many restaurants don’t offer health insurance, but McDonald’s does through these “mini-med plans,” the Journal explains. An example of such a policy is a McDonald’s employee on an individual policy who “can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year,” according to the paper.
McDonald’s action opens a window into the complexity, and unforeseen repercussions, of the nation’s new federal health care law, the Journal reports.
I’d say the Journal is correct.
UPDATED: McDonald’s issued a statement saying the Journal’s report that it was threatening to quit insuring thousands was “completely false” and “purely speculative and misleading.” A quick review of the Journal’s website doesn’t look as if the Journal is backing away from the story.
UPDATED: The Obama administration’s top health official will use her discretion in deciding when to enforce “a new health-law requirement, a move that could prevent McDonald’s Corp. and other employers from disrupting their health-care policies for hourly workers,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting.
