[quote=SK in CV][quote=flu]
I look at it another way… Health care needs to be (or is going to need to be rationed)…Folks like this I think are taking away resources from other folks who really need it.[/quote]
I’m confused by your logic here. How does insuring someone take resources away from other folks who really need it? Indeed, the claim begs the question. You’re assuming that this person, by having insurance (paid in full, presumably by her parents) will consume health care services that are less necessary than health care services someone else could consume, who is, for some reason, more deserving of those services. The assumption makes no sense.[/quote]
I was thinking of the case in which employer’s health plan pays for a good portion of employee AND dependent’s premiums, as was the case of the employers that I had worked with in the past. As such, as the number of insured increases and the duration of insuring them increase, so does the overall cost that the employer needs to pay for the insurance (excluding even claims)…in which the employers end up passing this cost to the rest of the employees in terms of higher premium employees’ portion of premimum (regardless of whether they are insuring themselves or their dependants) or in certain cases, employers simply cutting cost elsewhere like reducing headcount or cutting the insurance benefits for it’s employees to soak up the extra cost (higher deductibles, etc). And yes, I have seen all of the above scenarios…
But, as BG and UC pointed out, some employers just charge the entire dependent premium to the employee rather than it foot the bill itself or expecting everyone else to share in that bill. In this case, I have no real qualms, because the parent ends paying fully for the grown-kid’s insurance (even at the reduced rate).
Also, I wasn’t thinking of the the case in which someone is self-insured and is simply adding the grownup kid to his/her policy…. I believe the original article indicated that the young lady was being added to her parent’s employer plan (not her parent’s self-paid insurance). What the article didn’t mention is who pays for dependent care in her parent’s plan and how much.
