ObamaCare Shoots Down Boeing

Red Barry's Grim Socialized Medicine Reaper reaches my neck of the woods:

Aerospace giant Boeing is joining the list of companies that say the new health care law could have a potential downside for their workers.

In a letter mailed to employees late last week, the company cited the overhaul as part of the reason it is asking some 90,000 nonunion workers to pay significantly more for their health plan next year. A copy of the letter was obtained Monday by the Associated Press. …

Deductibles, the share of medical costs that employees pay annually before their plan kicks in, will go up to $300 for individuals, an increase of $100. For families, the new deductible will be $900, an increase of $300.

In addition, Boeing is instituting a copayment of 10% after the deductible has been met. The copayment will rise to 20% in 2012.

Those changes will reduce the value of the Boeing plan, but it’s unclear whether that will allow the company to escape the tax looming in 2018.

That would be the 40% "Cadillac Plan" tax scheduled to land like a hydrogen bomb on any employer stupid greedy enough to still offer that level of benefits to its employees in 2018.  Or maybe that makes the employees greedy; my, but this divisive classism can get convoluted.  But fear not if you're unionized, remember, as Big Labor is exempt from it.  And don't sweat that the feds will never see a dime of the $238 billion this tax was supposed to raise; they never gave a rat's ass about this tyrannous swindle's purported "deficit neutrality" or lack thereof.  It was just part of the scam to grease up this legislative gang rape.

Besides, Porky Murray will be there to help "fix" O-Care to force employers to cough up the revenue, even if it means direct, lawless confiscation.

Or....maybe not:

“Senator Murray promised lower costs with the passage of the new health care legislation, however for the last several weeks, families all over Washington State have seen their health care premiums skyrocket.  And, now, after announcing that the bill Senator Murray wrote will cost the company $150 million, Boeing announced today, that their employees will be forced to pay more to keep the health care plans they’ve counted on for years.

“This legislation was supposed to increase access and reduce costs, but it does neither – and even the President admitted he knew costs would increase.  This is not the reform Washingtonians were promised, and Senator Murray’s bill has failed Boeing, its employees, and every Washington family.”

For the record, my employer (ratio of nonunion workforce size to Boeing's: 5,000-1) has implemented a comparable benefit pullback and copayment increase.  And the individual plan I've held as a contingency against losing my job for almost twenty years (in which time I've been laid off twice)?  A thirty-four percent leap.  Which has me leaning strongly towards dropping it and taking my chances.

The One would have us villify Boeing for this entirely reasonable and understandable economic decision.  That's the whole point of O-Care, after all; since they weren't able to completely finish the government takeover of the medical industry, they still need propaganda gimmicks to build public support over the long term to take the final step of a "Public Option" to put private insurance carriers out of business directly and quickly.

However there is also a downside to eschewing incrementalism in favor of tyrannical ram-downs into the very teeth of furious public opposition: that that opposition becomes so furious and so broad-based that mindless extremist enablers like Porky get their f'ing electoral tennis shoes shoved up their asses sideways after having first attached long cleats to them; that the Dems lose so many seats that however many survive will have such terror stricken into their black, flinty, dead hearts that they really will do anything to survive, including, perhaps, voting with the new GOP majority to repeal O-Care altogether.

But in a state as obtusely "blue" as mine, is a majority that can rub sufficient brain cells together to understand that the problem does not lie with Boeing, but with the Regime that forced all these horrendous new costs on them at gunpoint, scroungeable, even in the biggest "red" wave in over sixty years?

I want to believe.  But....