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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

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jimbob45·

You seem to believe employees wouldn't be able to opt out of their own employer-based insurance. Why is that?

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From the summary of the bill:

> Private insurance that duplicates benefits offered under New York Health could not be offered to New York residents.

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My interpretation of that is that private insurance (which includes employer-based insurance) would be banned.

That's an incorrect interpretation. Private insurance would be restricted to cover things not already covered by the public insurance.

> The benefits will include comprehensive outpatient and inpatient medical care, long-term care, primary and preventive care, prescription drugs, laboratory tests, rehabilitative, dental, vision, hearing, etc. all benefits required by current state insurance law or provided by the state public employee package, Family Health Plus, Child Health Plus, Medicare, or Medicaid, and others added by the plan.

I'm struggling to understand what is not covered beyond that.

Yeah, the penalty for ACA non-compliance is zero at this point, so I think they could just opt-out entirely without cost, right?

I looked at it last year in terms of whether I'd need to pay for COBRA to cover the tax penalty and... nope. You can retroactively opt into COBRA for 90 days after the fact (iirc, check this yourself before using), so you can job hop and then if you happen to smash every bone in your body during that one week then just sign up for retroactive coverage.

For the employee it doesn't matter. Either I keep my existing insurance or I opt out and take the state provided one, but I don't get any more money the money I'm saving the company.

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