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Comment by 8bitben | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling the majority of that $1000 will be taken right back in higher health care costs and lost state & local deductions.

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That's almost guaranteed to be incorrect, and is extremely cynical.

The workers receiving those $1000 bonus checks, are not going to see a hit from the state & local deduction changes. Unless you think those people are making $250,000 per year and living in homes that cost $1,500,000 (they're not; and if they were, not only would the $1k not matter, they can easily afford the very slightly higher taxes).

Those workers are also covered under corporate health insurance. The only valid argument about rising healthcare costs in that regard, is that it detracts from their potential salaries over time (debatable whether that benefit would be redirected to salaries or to AT&T's net income figure, were healthcare costs lower).

If you're working for AT&T aren't you on corporate insurance?

Having corporate insurance doesn't mean employees aren't subject to paying premiums that could increase next year.

Although corporate insurance for companies the size of AT&T is generally self funded, rather than insured, so the state of the insurance market doesn’t always reflect their premiums.

> Although corporate insurance for companies the size of AT&T is generally self funded

When I worked there (long time ago), that wasn’t the case, but seems you are correct now anyway.

http://att.jobs/media/151345/Benefits-Overview-Management_01...

As more healthy people opt out of health insurance due to their no longer being a penalty, it's likely overall insurance rates will increase faster. They'll apparently continue to increase as they have for over a decade regardless, we just get to speed up or slow down the increase.

Possibly. Or rates will come down now that people aren't forced into buying them and insurance companies have to compete more. Also consider the supply/demand chart. What happens when demand goes down? So does prices.

In Utah there are quite a few clinics like Medallus that are offering very low cost pay as you go services. You can save easily over 10k a year with that. They have memberships too for like 100 a month that are more like insurance. When I look at my medical premium every month around 1500, plus deductibles and copays it's freaking ridiculous.

That just means the supply of healthy people in the market is going down, leaving behind a pool of heavy insurance users which will make premiums rise for those left in the pool.

If demand for insurance among healthy people drops, but demand among people with expensive healthcare needs stays constant, then the average price to provide insurance increases.

Rates have already gone up based the uncertainty of whether insurance companies will get reimbursed for discounts to low income customers. [1] If I’d kept my 2017 insurance plan, the rate would have up from $800 to $1544 a month for 2 adults.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/obamacare-bombshell-trump-ki...

I don't disagree with you guys, but traditional insurance is not the only variable in the equation. As that gets more expensive, other models and options will emerge, provided they are not made illegal by government regulation attempting to "fix" the problem, while simultaneously outlawing startups and novel solutions.

And ultimately I think insurance will go back down to sane levels when it becomes more like insurance is supposed to be (this is assuming that is permitted by government to happen, which is unlikely. I actually think we're gonna get single-payer within the next few years. Even Trump has supported that in the not-too-distant past (see [1] and secondarily [2])). Right now we call it insurance but it's basically a health plan. IMHO we need to stop screwing with it and let the market do its thing.

That said obviously we have the elephant in the room regarding people who can't afford care. It's inhumane to ignore those people. We need a solution there. I have ideas but this is a poor forum for articulating those.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/09/28/donald...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/05/tr...

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