Posted by Lisa, a resident of the Rex Manor neighborhood, on Mar 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm

What a wonderful idea! Kudos to Santa Clara county for being ahead of Washington on the first steps to solving the health care crisis. I certainly hope lots of small businesses take advantage of it.

Posted by KD, a resident of the Waverly Park neighborhood, on Mar 2, 2010 at 3:13 pm

What is the premium (after the $150 one time employer paid fee)? $75 a week, a month, a year, a decade?

I assume that the coverage is for employees, not families.

Lots of missing details.

Posted by kanank, a resident of the Old Mountain View neighborhood, on Mar 2, 2010 at 3:45 pm

The devil is in the details. Read this.."To be eligible for the program, a business must employ 50 or fewer workers, must not be currently providing health coverage to their employees, and pay a tax-deductible fee of $150 for every covered employee. Additionally, at least 50 percent of their eligible employees must enroll for the coverage to be offered". This will make many people ineligible to enorll in this program. Once again, it comes with so many strings attached to avoid people enrolling in this kind of programs.

Posted by USA, a resident of the Old Mountain View neighborhood, on Mar 3, 2010 at 12:05 pm
USA is a member (registered user) of Mountain View Online

Lisa -- Forcing someone else to pay your medical bills does not "solve" the problem any more than forcing you to pay my mortgage solves my mortgage problem.

Posted by Big Al, a resident of the Old Mountain View neighborhood, on Mar 3, 2010 at 2:04 pm

Can anyone step up and pay my car bill?

Posted by Lisa, a resident of the Rex Manor neighborhood, on Mar 4, 2010 at 10:31 am

"Lisa -- Forcing someone else to pay your medical bills does not "solve" the problem any more than forcing you to pay my mortgage solves my mortgage problem."

You are correct that it doesn't completely solve the problem, but it's a good first start in the right direction. Plus, the real value of having insurance is not that someone else pays your medical bills (that's only part of it!), but that the insurance companies have negotiated lower rates with the Doctors and hospitals. I have seen a $700 bill negotiated down to an "allowed" $300 or less and THEN paid by the insurance.

If more people were insured, we could go a long way to reducing and perhaps even reversing the rampant medical inflation that's been happening for decades. A big part of the problem is when uninsured people end up in the hospital with no way to pay. The hospital is required to treat them anyway and gets no money whatsoever from them; they then have to raise prices all around for everyone else to cover their care.

And of course, the other part of the problem is that the drug and medical device companies get away with charging WAY WAY too much money because they can.