Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 260 posts

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#241

Post by ghaff »

skybrian wrote: post #239
ghaff wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are. But I think you're hearing a lot of people not liking the cost associated with significantly de-risking a future annual income stream. Annuities can certainly make sense, including ones that, for example, you can get by donating appreciated assets.

How does that work? If you're getting an annuity in return for donating something, that doesn't sound like a donation?

Charitable organizations (basically 501(c)3s in the US) don't have to pay tax on the appreciated value. So annuities offered by those organizations may take advantage of that tax benefit. In many cases, it will still be a net donation relative to other options, especially insofar as you can't pass on residual assets to beneficiaries, but it is one way of taking advantage of tax law to create an annuity.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#242

Post by antisthenes »

chooseaname wrote: post #118
zarro wrote: post #85

I really think that the sooner we can separate out pensions and healthcare from employers, the better. Businesses main area of expertise is not in pensions and healthcare, and they cannot provide these services as efficiently as if there were many different insurance companies on the market offering these services for sale, and instead the company paid you a fee for your services, and then you went out on the market…

I would love for this to happen. But I see a couple blockers. 1) It is some sort of badge of honor to get a "job with benefits". 2) What if more people decide to not get healthcare? If your job gives it to you and you "only" have to pay a few hundred a month for your family, you are more likely to get it than if you payed everything out of pocket each month (even if your compensation increased). People would see all…

1. Maybe I just haven't had a job with good benefits, but for me, the biggest and the only benefit I care about is the amount of PTO.

Other countries seem to be doing fine with that model, I'm not sure what it is about the US culture that prevents it from working.

2. Single payer.

3. This statement always seems like a cop-out to throw hands up in the air and do nothing. There are things you can achieve with a multitude of small steps. There are things where you can't, and you have to take a few large leaps.

To just say oh let's ignore the latter category forever, because people people don't like it, is simply giving up.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#244

Post by jki275 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #211
ScottFree wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other countries have already figured this out. None of those countries are the size of the US. Just like in Physics, you can't expect a 1/10th scale model to behave the same as the life sized version.

Japan has what...126 million people? So according to your math, America must have 1.26 billion people? Australia is as big as the US if you meant by area, plenty of other countries approach 100+ million besides Japan. The EU has 511 million people. Sure it is multiple systems, but they all work much better than ours does.

Japan is a totally different culture than America, and their health care system is similar to ours in that it is employer paid. Also, you have no medical privacy rights, your employer gets a copy of every medical bill you incur.

Source, lived there six years and spouse was in that system for over 25 years.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#245

Post by jki275 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #201
Faark wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its send to collections. So you're only fine if you are poor enough to not have anything they can take from you. And at that point you are eligible for gov support to your healthcare bill anyway. Here in germany you can actually kind of get away with not paying for a while when not consuming. But coverage has to be continuous, so if you need insurance since you want to go to the doctor a few years down the line, you…

Hospitals already charge higher rates to those without insurance because of those payers high default rate. Collections is expensive, and they might not be able to collect anything at the end, so they price that risk into the prices.

Cite? Generally people without insurance are able to negotiate significantly lower bills - or the bills simply aren’t paid at all.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#246

Post by technofiend »

javagram wrote: post #136
technofiend wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but this is definitely why I think the 401k/private saving model is the best. Not sure if it made outside just the Houston news cycle at the time but as an employee of a competitor I heard from friends at Enron that their employer froze all sales of their stock in employee 401ks before going under. Lou Pai managed to cash out as part of a divorce settlement as documented here https://www.chron.com/business/enron/ar…

Definitely don’t put your own company’s stock in your 401k. The 401k plans I’ve seen all had an option to invest the money in a diverse fund. Either a target date retirement fund that auto allocated to a mix of stocks and bonds, or to other funds such as an S&P 500 index. Freezing employee stock sales is fairly normal as I understand it. I get emails all the time from my publicly traded employer stating I cannot trad…

Freezing stock to prevent insider trading is one thing... Freezing it to prevent a stock price crash and buy the company a few more days at the expense of employees is another.

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#247

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jki275 wrote: post #245
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospitals already charge higher rates to those without insurance because of those payers high default rate. Collections is expensive, and they might not be able to collect anything at the end, so they price that risk into the prices.

Cite? Generally people without insurance are able to negotiate significantly lower bills - or the bills simply aren’t paid at all.

They can negotiate afterwards if they say they can’t pay, but that also is already built into the higher non-insured price list...

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#248

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jki275 wrote: post #244
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan has what...126 million people? So according to your math, America must have 1.26 billion people? Australia is as big as the US if you meant by area, plenty of other countries approach 100+ million besides Japan. The EU has 511 million people. Sure it is multiple systems, but they all work much better than ours does.

Japan is a totally different culture than America, and their health care system is similar to ours in that it is employer paid. Also, you have no medical privacy rights, your employer gets a copy of every medical bill you incur. Source, lived there six years and spouse was in that system for over 25 years.

Our healthcare system isn’t employer paid, it also has a large individual market (or those who can’t get access at all).

Japan, unlike the USA, has a health insurance plan for those who can’t get it through their employers (NHI, hence their system is considered universal).

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#249

Post by REBECCA7263 »

TESTIMONY!!! Thanks to you for helping me get this loan i will for ever be be grateful to you i will forever give testimony about your good company i will advice any one in need of a loan to contact this loan company for help this is her direct Email Via: blackstoneinvestment11@outlook.com Or you Can WhatsApp him Via: +1 267-652-8334

Re: GE freezes pension benefits for 20k employees

#250

Post by jki275 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #248
jki275 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is a totally different culture than America, and their health care system is similar to ours in that it is employer paid. Also, you have no medical privacy rights, your employer gets a copy of every medical bill you incur. Source, lived there six years and spouse was in that system for over 25 years.

Our healthcare system isn’t employer paid, it also has a large individual market (or those who can’t get access at all). Japan, unlike the USA, has a health insurance plan for those who can’t get it through their employers (NHI, hence their system is considered universal).

I'm not sure what you mean by "our", that's ambiguous in this context. If you mean US, we don't have a "healthcare system", most health insurance is partially employer paid. My comment was not as clear as I meant it -- I meant that Japan's healthcare system is employer paid, which is similar to how most people in the US are insured. Maybe that's more clear.

Japan does also have NHI, but most are insured through their employers, as nearly everyone in Japan either works or is insured by someone in their family who works.

Post reply on HN