The San Diego Union-Tribune
December 16, 2004
Jack puts health plan on employees’ menu
By Sarah Skidmore
In an effort to reduce employee turnover, fast-food purveyor Jack in the Box
recently began offering all its hourly restaurant employees access to health
insurance.
United HealthCare designed the program and provides the network and administration.
Employees can choose from three medical plans – the better the coverage, the
higher the cost. Premiums range from $10 to $17.50 a week. After one year of
service, the company picks up half of the premium bill.
The program addresses most medical needs but favors preventive care. For
example, doctor’s visits, immunizations and wellness checkups are covered
until, depending on the plan, costs reach $150 to $300. After that, employees pay a discounted rate.
“You can’t get a lot with $520 annually,” said Bob Belko, senior consultant of health care and group benefits practice at consulting firm Watson Wyatt. Belko said employees are largely paying for a discount on health care.
“Competitively speaking we have just put ourselves in with companies that perform very well,” Duarte said (Raul Duarte, division vice president of compensation and benefits for San Diego-based Jack in the Box).
Duarte said that until this design, the company could not find a plan that was affordable to the company and employees.
If Jack in the Box reduces turnover by 1 percent with this program, the company thinks it will recoup the $300,000 it anticipates in initial costs.
“This wasn’t all social do-good,” Duarte said. “There’s definitely a business case for it.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041216/news_1b16jbx.html
It is of interest to note that Jack in the Box is paying $300,000 for this program ($9 for each of their 33,000 employees) shortly after paying $313,610 to oppose Proposition 72, California’s employer mandate which lost by a 49.1% to 50.9% vote.
http://www.health-access.org/2004_12_01_Sac_archives.htm#110304184728297352
Comment: Jack in the Box’s program is primarily a discount card for health
care services. Employees do have the option of selecting plans with greater
benefits, but these plans provide only extremely Spartan benefits with very
low caps on maximum coverage. It is obvious that, for low wage employees,
this program provides virtually no financial security when faced with significant health care expenses.
There may be more “social do-good” than the Jack in the Box management
realizes. The outrage over the insensitivity of the management toward the
health care needs of their employees may drive the rest of us to finally demand a comprehensive system for everyone. I hope that we don’t have to wait for the tragic stories of what happens when the Jack in the Box employees attempt to access the health care system.
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004
PublicAffairs
The Bubble of American Supremacy
By George Soros
Markets are designed to facilitate the free exchange of goods and services among willing participants, but are not capable, on their own, of taking care of collective needs. Nor are they competent to ensure social justice.
These “public goods” can only be provided by a political process.
http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=1586482173
The Washington Post
December 24, 2004
Truth in Medicine
By Paul H. O’Neill
… the president should appoint a commission with a tight deadline to redesign the health care reimbursement system with the goal of making it pro-patient.
The 30 to 50 percent of national medical care spending that is currently paying for waste and errors can be captured only through deliberate action at the local level. With the health care industry and the government playing their parts, hundreds of billions of dollars can be freed up. This would make it easy to solve the so-called “access” problem of uninsured Americans and still leave large amounts for other important needs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23570-2004Dec23.html
Comment: While George Soros and Paul O’Neil do not occupy the same point on the political spectrum, they both recognize that the government must play a
role in ensuring social justice, or, more specifically, affordable access to high quality care for everyone.
What could better represent the spirit of Christmas than to set aside partisanship and begin to seriously discuss the role of government in ensuring quality, access and affordability of health care for everyone? Even Ebenezer Scrooge eventually became enlightened.
