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GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

businessinsider.com

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Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#191

Post by guitarbill »

throebd wrote: post #185
chooseaname wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. Sadly, I have, and it is invariably from people who basically say those who don't work don't deserve healthcare. It is disturbing to hear people say this. They don't want to "pay" for someone else's healthcare. Th…

Would the free healthcare include only US citizens, all people who live in US, or everyone who comes to US on holiday? If you want more affordable healthcare, you should make it cheaper, not force other people to pay overpriced bills for random strangers.

Naturally, it would include US citizens and permanent residents, and not holidaymakers. They already need travel insurance. By the way, those plans are more expensive with US coverage than without.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#192

Post by seanmcdirmid »

throebd wrote: post #185
chooseaname wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. Sadly, I have, and it is invariably from people who basically say those who don't work don't deserve healthcare. It is disturbing to hear people say this. They don't want to "pay" for someone else's healthcare. Th…

Would the free healthcare include only US citizens, all people who live in US, or everyone who comes to US on holiday? If you want more affordable healthcare, you should make it cheaper, not force other people to pay overpriced bills for random strangers.

Other countries have already figured this out. And no one ever calls it “free healthcare” except for a few naive American libertarians. They don’t provide free healthcare, and if you aren’t in the system (and paying via taxes or otherwise covered via tax revenue redistribution), you’ll get a bill one way or the other (unless there is an agreement between two socialized health systems).

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#193

Post by RIMR »

entropea wrote: post #39
rootusrootus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you conflating GM with GE?

I read it that way too, at first, mostly because of GM's recent strike & health benefit cut headlines.

That's pretty incredible that you read this article so fast that you managed to misread the ~30 instances of "GE" and "General Electric" as "GM" and "General Motors", and never noticed the giant "GE" logo at the top of the article, or the "General Electric" stock ticker on the sidebar.

It's almost like you only read the headline and nothing else, because the article itself screams "General Electric" in a way that nobody who actually visited the page would ever have been confused.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#194

Post by mhb »

mrlala wrote: post #121
zarro wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that the European version of outsourcing that responsibility to the government is the way to go for the same reason. Letting people set up private companies with competitive options I think would probably drive the best results.

>Letting people set up private companies with competitive options I think would probably drive the best results. Hello, please call * 910 if you think your fire is not urgent, and can wait 10 minutes to come for free * 911 if you think your fire is getting hotter, and can only way 5 minutes to come for $500 * 912 if you would like the fire department to come as soon as they possible can, and skip the queue of 910 cal…

Are you suggesting that there are not places with private fire companies/insurance who will only put out your fire if you are a subscriber?

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#195

Post by MrRadar »

throebd wrote: post #185
chooseaname wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't enthusiastically agreed that we should separate healthcare from employment. The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. Sadly, I have, and it is invariably from people who basically say those who don't work don't deserve healthcare. It is disturbing to hear people say this. They don't want to "pay" for someone else's healthcare. Th…

Would the free healthcare include only US citizens, all people who live in US, or everyone who comes to US on holiday? If you want more affordable healthcare, you should make it cheaper, not force other people to pay overpriced bills for random strangers.

Everyone should be covered for emergency care. Beyond that citizens and permanent residents should receive unlimited care and anyone with a student or work visa should also be covered for the term of their visa.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#196

Post by nradov »

rileymat2 wrote: post #55
lotsofpulp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, defined benefit pension plans don't make financial sense in the current climate. Who is able to predict which company will be around in 30 to 60 years in the future, and what the economic climate will be? And much of the pension fund investments are going to the same place as 401k money anyway. Why not directly invest in VTI and skip paying all the pension fund managers and staff? It's not like they have…

The simple answer is that group mortality is easier to estimate and plan for than individual mortality. At 65, you do not know if you are going to live to 70 or 101, so you need to plan your 401k accordingly, pessimistic. Couple that with the fact that many many americans could not save enough to last to 101, but could last until 72. So they are left with the choice of living more poorly than they should or running o…

That's what annuities are for.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#197

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jartelt wrote: post #187
amluto wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reluctance comes when nobody has any idea what we're going to replace it with. The straightforward answer is to replace it with self-paid insurance plans. Even without redesigning our awful system of medical payments in the US, we could easily get rid of the “employer pays” part.

Self-paid insurance plans only work if you require every one to buy a plan. Otherwise many healthy people choose to go uncovered and the insurance pools get a higher portion of sick folks. Obamacare tried to get around this by using the individual mandate penalty. However, that was taken apart by the republican congress, so I think it's safe to say that self-pay insurance was/is not straight forward. The most straigh…

It works in Switzerland. They do, however, have high healthcare costs second only to the USA (but much better results overall).

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#198

Post by zarro »

zarro wrote: post #179
lotsofpulp wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It makes all the sense in the world when you compare it to any other business. You wouldn't expect for someone who paid $1M to get the same level of treatment as someone who paid $100. Currently, society does not find it acceptable for someone to die from a heart attack if they cannot pay for healthcare. And people already get different levels of care.

I don't see how you can justify without using a double standard the idea that its okay to use coercion to take advantage of a minority to enforce an idea of "acceptable" that they might not agree with.

I think the way that it works in America at least is that you have a minority of rich and healthy people and a majority that does not have much money and is not super healthy. Our democracy is suppose to be limited, in that the government is not suppose to use its monopoly of coercion to enforce the majority decision on the minority. So to get around this the voters forced the hospitals to treat them, even if the question "what if you can't pay for it" was left tacitly unanswered. The hospitals of course can't afford to pay for this bill either so they give the government an invoice for it, and the governments only way of paying that invoice is by increasing taxes. Which is a conundrum of where we are at.

Of course the majority (if its poor and sick) is going to pick the path of least resistance - which is to vote short term to get a subsidy from the healthy and rich (instead of pursuing to long term path toward developing skills to provide valuable services so that you could get rich and afford valuable services, such as healthcare, not to mention living life in a way to minimize chance of getting sick/ill in the first place.)

But in the end this sort of "take from the rich and minority" mentality just leads to the dissolution of thevalue that they create, and unfortunately only after they are gone, to the dissolution of the principle architects of that mentality.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#199

Post by pastor_williams »

mrlala wrote: post #121
zarro wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that the European version of outsourcing that responsibility to the government is the way to go for the same reason. Letting people set up private companies with competitive options I think would probably drive the best results.

>Letting people set up private companies with competitive options I think would probably drive the best results. Hello, please call * 910 if you think your fire is not urgent, and can wait 10 minutes to come for free * 911 if you think your fire is getting hotter, and can only way 5 minutes to come for $500 * 912 if you would like the fire department to come as soon as they possible can, and skip the queue of 910 cal…

The private firefighter industry: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/27/736715592/the-private-firefig...

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#200

Post by pastor_williams »

mhb wrote: post #194
mrlala wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Letting people set up private companies with competitive options I think would probably drive the best results. Hello, please call * 910 if you think your fire is not urgent, and can wait 10 minutes to come for free * 911 if you think your fire is getting hotter, and can only way 5 minutes to come for $500 * 912 if you would like the fire department to come as soon as they possible can, and skip the queue of 910 cal…

Are you suggesting that there are not places with private fire companies/insurance who will only put out your fire if you are a subscriber?

They'll also put out your fire if it looks likely to spread to a subscriber's property.
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