Mailchimp Employees Shocked When Their Health Benefits Ended | Hacker News Reader

Mailchimp Employees Shocked When Their Health Benefits Ended

businessinsider.com

53 pointscoloneltcb13 comments

The headline is a bit sensationalized. Their coverage ended on a Sunday and the new coverage started on Monday. And if anyone had denied claims on the expired insurance, they just need to file a cla with the new insurance and they'll be repaid.

Business Insider is an extremely unreliable and heavily left leaning source. It's good to steer clear of them for "business" news.

How do you know it's "heavily left leaning", I mean, it's called "Business Insider" not "World Socialist Workers United Insider"

Communist countries like to call themselves "People's Republic of Wonderland", that does not mean the name has any truth in it.

Cheers for not answering the question.

Emphasizes the difference between owning a startup/small company and merely working for one. Also emphasizes the difference between having health care and having health care tied to your employment. I thought COBRA allowed one to back-purchase coverage if it turned out you needed it - and this would seem applicable to this situation.

Sure sounds like a not-so-hidden attempt to downsize as I posted previously re: negative job actions. Again, no charge to the company if people exit on their own... Read the fine print in these kinds of changes to make sure there's no date where leaving before is a normal exit while leaving after is not (severance, etc).

Life's not fair, and it sux having it thrown in people's faces like this. But without a union and in an industry with dog eats dog thinking, it's up to you to protect your ass.

I mean sure great way to downsize if you plan to fire everyone. Otherwise you just keep those that can’t find another job so you get the worst employees

COBRA is really spendy. AFAICR, it's allowing you to continue payments on your policy, but you then have to pick up what the employer was paying. In best of cases this usually means a doubling of what you used to realize as a health insurance cost.

COBRA's value is that it insulates you from a gap in coverage and/or a forced change to your provider network and benefit structure. For younger people without unmanaged chronic conditions, I think COBRA provides little value at all, but YMMV based on risk-tolerance.

> it's up to you to protect your ass

and to manage your contracts/engagements/agreements to profit. You can use a union as your employment agent, but they'll take a cut for their trouble and introduce some other dynamics to your employment (wage caps, seniority considerations, another political realm to manage).

The typical advice is to buy COBRA regardless. They don’t require the money up front, and if you get covered in the interim you can cancel COBRA. Worst case they’ll send you a bill you don’t pay and it’s a small hit to your credit for a while.

The last time I had to do this I managed to convince the COBRA administrator to backdate my cancellation because the bills got lost in the mail and I didn’t have any credit hit.

What? How is failing to pay your bills better than getting COBRA retroactively only if you need it..? The latter has the same benefits and avoids getting harassed by collections and trashing your credit.

Their new insurance starts the very next day and any one-off gap issues are covered by the new policy. I've done far worse things to myself while self-employed.

https://archive.ph/dxiYI

Regardless of whether the health insurance coverage resumed/not, this whole acquisition has been so shoddy to look at as an outsider. The company I was working for got acquired earlier this summer and I felt we were kept in the loop about every single development, in addition to the good news that 98% of the employees were retained and are happy to work in the merged company today. Communication is key, and Intuit imposing weird rules like no messaging goodbyes or asking question on Slack etc only furthers the mistrust the employees come in already might have.

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