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Topic: Regal cuts employee hours to stay out of Obamacare

Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 04-16-2013 10:46 PM

quote: Martin McCaffery
Of course, the source of the Fox article was most likely a Regal press release.

The article quotes what they claim to be an internal memo sent to managers, for what it's worth.

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Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003

posted 04-17-2013 12:06 AM

I'll just continue reading the Daily Prophet. [Razz]

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 04-17-2013 12:39 AM

I really think that, if health insurance was eliminated (made illegal) the price of health care would quickly fall to market rates. Companies could only charge what people can afford. The mere existence of insurance guarantees prices will climb via the snowball effect that Bobby describes. Health insurance is a form of a Ponzi scheme which will eventually collapse. The government is trying to prop up that Ponzi scheme which will only prolong the agony but I'm fairly sure it will collapse even if it takes 50 years.

Okay, so we get rid of insurance. What can we do when some people can't pay? I don't know. There will have to be some sort of compromise. I'm only guessing, here...

First off, I don't see things like car accidents to be too much of a problem. If you get hit by somebody else who is insured, their policy ought to pay. I don't see why we can't tweak the rules so that we make sure that people hurt in accidents, through no fault of their own, are absolutely taken care of. That shouldn't be too hard to do. Uninsured and underinsured drivers are a separate problem but I think that reforming the insurance system will solve a lot of these problems by bringing cost down in the first place. We could come up with some solution to fill in the gap. I don't know what. I'll have to think about that one.

Second, one problem I see with current health care plans is that they pay for everything from just a Band-Aid to health club memberships. Insurance pays for too much and, thus, dilutes the quality of the things it pays for. For example, if I had $100, to spend, I could buy food for ten people at McDonald's or two people could eat at Hilltop Steak House. Not a perfect example but it illustrates the point that, if you don't spend money on too much stuff, you have more money to spend on better things. Instead of paying for every Band-Aid, we limit what insurance pays for.

Eliminate co-pays and deductibles. All those do is allow insurance companies to manipulate prices by claiming that they have higher or lower deductibles. Let's throw that all out. Either insurance pays or it doesn't. We could put in a lower limit, above which, insurance MUST pay. This will make insurance cheaper to afford and the other things that I mention will cut costs to insurance companies, taking away some incentive to manipulate the markets the way they do, now.

To be honest, I could spend $50 per month on prescriptions.
Under normal circumstances, I usually only visit the doctor two or three times per year. I could spend $50 or $100 for a routine doctor visit. If my current health insurance has a $20 co-pay, that raises the cost of my policy. I end up paying $1200 or more per year for, maybe, $500 worth of service.

For major illness, we could have hospitalization or major medical insurance that is separate from other insurance. It pays only if you are admitted to the hospital or only if the cost is over a certain amount.

Businesses whose employees get sick or hurt on the job already have to pay for Worker's Compensation insurance. Let's cut the crap out of the Worker's Comp system. No messing around. If your worker gets hurt, your company pays. Period. That would certainly go a long way toward making companies using their balance sheets to justify cutting corners on safety. Wouldn't it? That would, hopefully, take care of the problem of people who get hurt at work.

I don't think these ideas are perfect solutions but they are certainly starting points to get the discussion rolling. Regardless of the method, our entire system of paying for health care has to be completely rethought. I don't think the current system is sustainable and I am virtually certain that government sponsored and paid system will do much to solve the problem at all.

We are going to have to do something different. We should start to try to fix it now, from the ground up.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

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From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 04-17-2013 02:20 AM

quote: Randy Stankey
First, I think it is wrong to make some people pay for medical care of others. The majority of people who have health insurance don't use it very often. They'll get checkups and have minor illnesses or injuries treated but, mostly, they consume little or no health care services. It ends up being like a Ponzi scheme.

The problem there is in genetic susceptibility to serious (read expensive) diseases. Everybody knows someone who leads a relatively unhealthy lifestyle who, when challenged about it, will reply defensively that a friend of theirs smoked 120 a day and lived to 95, and knew someone else who was vegan, teetotal and ran ten miles a day, but was dead of cancer aged 35. They are of course exceptions that prove the general rule: there is a lot we can do to take care of our own health, but some factors are outside our control. Is it morally OK to say 'Sorry pal, but even though there's a history of serious heart disease on both sides of your family, if you have a heart attack, you're on your own?'.

It's very difficult and probably impossible to come up with a system that is even accurate most of the time in rewarding personal responsibility without also punishing bad luck. An insurance model, whether run commercially or in the form of a state-run healthcare service, does at least help those who have been dealt a bad hand (which might not even be genetic: what if both your parents were heavy smokers and you grew up doing a lot of passive smoking?).

quote: Randy Stankey

Second and more importantly, I think that spreading the risk necessitates concentrating authority over the administration of the health care system. Concentrating authority virtually always concentrates the potential for corruption and abuse.

There I could not agree more, and virtually everything that has gone systemically wrong with the British National Health Service (most recently the Stafford Hospital scandal and the Leeds heart unit row) boils down to this.

quote: Randy Stankey
Eliminate co-pays and deductibles. All those do is allow insurance companies to manipulate prices by claiming that they have higher or lower deductibles. Let's throw that all out. Either insurance pays or it doesn't. We could put in a lower limit, above which, insurance MUST pay. This will make insurance cheaper to afford and the other things that I mention will cut costs to insurance companies, taking away some incentive to manipulate the markets the way they do, now.

Also agreed, and my (admittedly superficial) understanding of the French system (explained to me by a French medical student many years ago) is that this is effectively how it works. You pay a small fee to see a family doctor for routine treatments and minor stuff, and are expected to pay for everyday medicines yourself, but if you have a chronic and/or expensive condition, then the state steps in and picks up the tab.

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Lyle Romer
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From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 04-17-2013 06:23 AM

To add a little more to Bobby's point, the "Affordable Care Act" set out to solve a problem that didn't exist (access to healthcare) and made the problem that does exist (health care costs) worse.

Anybody in the US could get healthcare before this law was passed by going to a hospital ER and never pay for it. Now that all kinds of required coverage has been added to insurance plans (pre existing conditions, etc) the premiums will only go up.

Back to the original story. Look at it this way. Let's say a worker is getting $9 an hour to work 35 hours per week. So they make $315 a week or roughly $1300 a month (rounding). Now, if Regal has to provide a health plan even a cheap one is going to be $300 a month. Therefore Regal would have an increased cost of 23% per employee. It would be less if they just paid the fine but still significant.

Option 2 is to make sure nobody works over the threshold. I'm not so sure this is an "unintended" consequence of the law. To stay away from politics I'll leave it at that.

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Frank B. McLaughlin
Film Handler

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From: Denver, CO
Registered: Dec 2011

posted 04-17-2013 07:46 AM

[Anybody in the US could get healthcare before this law was passed by going to a hospital ER and never pay for it.] [/Lyle Romer]

Which brings us to the real problem. When I go to the ER my insurance company pays the $1200 bill. When the uninsured goes in for the "free" visit that unpaid $1200 bill goes to collection. Now the collection company is willing the settle for $350 (actual cost?). Now if EVERYONE had coverage then my bill would have been $350 also. My insurance company would pay and that insurance company could lower my rates. I resent paying for the free-loader.

Now Regal, being the fine upstanding corporate citizen that they are has opted for the bottom line (after all money is involved here). Now if all the theater companies think the same we are still at square one. This is what universal coverage is trying to get us beyond.

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Mike Frese
Master Film Handler

Posts: 465
From: Holts Summit, MO
Registered: Jun 2007

posted 04-17-2013 08:49 AM

How many of you who are calling this a bullshit reason to cut hours have ever hired people AND looked at the cost of providing health insurance?

Lyle, gave a good example of how this works.

Those who are questioning Fox, would you expect MSNBC to have the same article? Hell no! Just look at the coverage of the Philadelphia Abortion doctor. News outlets are political. Now be shocked!

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 04-17-2013 09:43 AM

There's a big catch to the whole walk into the ER and not pay the bill thing. That's only good for a one time thing.

A disease like cancer is different. That's not solved in one visit to the ER. Insurance companies and hospitals can (and do) decide to send someone home to die instead of treating them particularly if they don't have any medical coverage.

Those who do have insurance may be dropped when their policy comes around for its annual renewal. A battle against cancer often isn't won (or lost) inside of a single calendar year. Someone who did have health insurance and help battling cancer may suddenly be on his own. This is also true of other diseases and disorders that patients just have to live with possibly for the rest of their lives -like MS, HIV, Parkinson's Disease, etc.

It's very easy for working people and even business owners to be financially devastated under our health care system in the United States. The people getting crushed into bankruptcy by health care bills aren't freeloading slobs on welfare. But they're seen that way by those who want this very greedy system to remain unchanged.

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Scott Jentsch
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From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003

posted 04-17-2013 10:33 AM

Reading the article a few times shows that it's clearly intended to be provocative, but let's get to the meat of the matter here without introducing political discourse:

==============
Regal Cinemas has adjusted work schedules for "thousands" of employees, and has cited compliance with new federal employment regulations as the reason.
==============

Regardless of what those new regulations are, they are the new law of the land. Just one of very many that businesses have to comply with, and factor the costs of compliance into their cost of doing business.

In this particular case, a major employer, with $2.8 billion in revenue (that comes to an average of $5.6 million per location), has decided to reduce the work hours of its employees so those employees would be reclassified rather than comply with the new regulation that would have otherwise applied to those employees.

The company has chosen to change its employment policies rather than incur unspecified increased costs, which would have affected net profits and/or the price it charges its customers.

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Sean McKinnon
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From: Peabody Massachusetts
Registered: Sep 2000

posted 04-17-2013 12:06 PM

Strange... When I worked foe LCE ten years ago hourly employees were restricted to 30 hours (at least in mass) and with one or two exceptions all managers were salary. It surprises me that Regal allowed hourly employees to work that many hours before this.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 04-17-2013 12:50 PM

quote: Frank B. McLaughlin
Which brings us to the real problem. When I go to the ER my insurance company pays the $1200 bill. When the uninsured goes in for the "free" visit that unpaid $1200 bill goes to collection. Now the collection company is willing the settle for $350 (actual cost?). Now if EVERYONE had coverage then my bill would have been $350 also. My insurance company would pay and that insurance company could lower my rates. I resent paying for the free-loader.

IMO, it makes no sense to call a settled amount the actual cost. Often times the settled amount is just obtained so that they can get something out of the client, even if it results in a loss (since it is preferable to obtain money and lose than to obtain none and lose more). In those situations, the difference can be taken as a tax write-off.

Further, if the collection agent is obtaining $350 from the client, that means that the hospital is likely only getting around $230-250 since collection agents usually work on commission.

Though, I'd be surprised if a collection agent would bother going to the trouble of finding the person for such an amount ($350). They could easily blow past the collection amount in costs for trying to collect in a very short time.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

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From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 04-17-2013 01:09 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
There's a big catch to the whole walk into the ER and not pay the bill thing. That's only good for a one time thing.

That's not true. If you are really sick and walk into an ER they will take care of you. Of course they may give you the bare minimum care to keep you alive, but nobody is turned away due to financial need....at least not in Montana.

The problem is that there are SO many people who just show up at the ER for minor problems like a bad cold, and then don't pay the bill. There are definitely a lot of people in this country who are in financial straits because of health care costs, but there are also DEFINITELY a lot of freeloaders too.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 04-17-2013 01:57 PM

ER use and abuse is in dire need of reform -the main reform being the task of beating the message into the heads of those who put their brains on auto-pilot and head to the ER in knee-jerk response on any issue no matter how minor.

At the same time, I can find many "family doctors" in my area who are not taking in any new patients -and certainly won't have a damned thing to do with any person lacking health insurance coverage. It's also pretty damned difficult to get seen without an appointment even if you do have insurance. Those two factors put more people into emergency rooms for treatment of minor problems.

"Urgent Care Clinics" are popping up in more places. We have a couple of them here in Lawton. They try to pull non-emergency health issues out of the ER. They're also an alternative for patients who don't have a family doctor. You can be seen without an appointment, although wait times can be kind of high. The downside: AFAIK these places will not treat you without proof of insurance. If you don't have coverage you're probably going to be back a the ER.

I think my point about cancer and other long term diseases and disorders still stands. The Hippocratic Oath is pretty much irrelevant. If you don't have health insurance, but have discovered a malignant melanoma on your leg the ER isn't going to do much for you. There's an outside chance they might cut the cancerous freckle off your leg, but that's it. They're not going to assign you an oncologist or put you on a cancer treatment program. An insurance company sure as hell won't offer coverage if they know you have cancer beforehand.

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 04-17-2013 04:16 PM

As much as I'd love to pull down my shorts and diarrhea all over Regal, apparently this is not the entire story. It's not entirely false, either. I guess Fox cherry-picked the news. Unfortunately I don't know what the full story is and you won't find any Regal employees posting about it here.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 04-17-2013 07:25 PM

quote: Mike Blakesley
That's not true. If you are really sick and walk into an ER they will take care of you. Of course they may give you the bare minimum care to keep you alive, but nobody is turned away due to financial need....at least not in Montana.

Yes, no one can be turned away, though the places really only want people who can will usually send them to a public hospital. Paying for transport to a public hospital can be cheaper than dealing with someone who will never pay.

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