Delta Airlines and the $100 Million Costs of Obamacare
By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | August 21st, 2013 at 10:01 PM
Republicans in the United States House of Representatives and Senate claim they will vote to defund Obamacare, but they won’t actually fight for it. What they want to fight for is just a delay of the individual mandate. That’s it. But there is so much more that is so much more onerous about Obamacare. Delta Airlines, in a letter it prepared back in June, outlined just how onerous Obamacare would be to the airline.
In the past twenty-four hours, during my radio show in Atlanta, numerous Delta employees called in to tell me Delta is now telling its employees their healthcare will be radically changed because of Obamacare. A handful of them said the June 2013 letter from Delta to the Obama Administration is being circulated among employees.
The letter is stunning. According to Delta, in 2014 Obamacare will cost the company at least $38 million in direct costs and that is only the beginning. With added medical inflation, Delta claims “the cost of providing health care to our employees will increase by nearly $100,000,000 next year.” A $100 million increase thanks in large part to Obamacare and ancillary cost increases derived therefrom. Yes, I have the letter. From the letter:
The ACA requires large employers to pay an annual fee of $63 per covered participant in 2014. For Delta’s roughly 160,000 enrolled active and retired employees and their family members, this represents more than $10 million added to the cost of providing health care next year. As we discussed, this fee, which is meant to help stabilize the state exchanges as they get started, provides absolutely zero direct benefit to our participants. It is, essentially, a direct subsidy from us and our employees to those who participate in the exchanges.
https://www.redstate.com/2013/08/21/delta-airlines-and-the-100-million-costs-of-obamacare/
