Work Horses: The Truth Beneath The Glory

[flea77]

Wow. All I know is I was paying over 12,000 a year and that amount dropped by about 9K and I now have dental coverage too which I did not have before.

I have two friends, each small business owners, and neither of whom could even afford health insurance before, who now have full coverage -one for about $200 a month and one for about $45 a month.

I work at a large corporation , without any of the "vouchers". If your paying less and are actually paying the full cost, then you are in the minority. Most who are paying the full cost have seen huge increases in the cost w less benefits.

 

[flea77]

Mac, my main concern is the fact that several of our players are sharing this video on their Facebook pages. I'm not naive but I hate to think that this video/subject will have a negative affect on the locker room.

I doubt any of them really care that much about it

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I work at a large corporation , without any of the "vouchers". If your paying less and are actually paying the full cost, then you are in the minority. Most who are paying the full cost have seen huge increases in the cost w less benefits.

I think the word "huge" is misleading, flea. I don't doubt your situation one bit, but extrapolating that over the entire health care system is not based in fact.

Most Americans — 48 percent of the population — have insurance through their workplaces. Employer-sponsored premiums for family plans went up 3.8 percent on average in 2013, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual employer health benefits survey. Since the ACA was passed in 2010, those premiums have gone up 5.9 percent on average per year, while in the five years before the ACA, premiums went up 4.8 percent on average per year. Not exactly “skyrocketing.”

and

A small increase in work-based premiums can be linked directly to the ACA. When family premiums jumped 9 percent from 2010 to 2011, experts told us that the law was responsible for a 1 percent to 3 percent increase, with the remainder due to higher medical costs. At the time, the law had required the elimination of preexisting condition exclusions for children, the coverage of dependents on their parents’ plans up to age 26, free coverage of preventive care, and the increase in caps on annual coverage.

and

A series of Americans for Prosperity ads also claims that “millions are paying more and getting less,” a reference to those who had their individual market policies canceled because they didn’t meet the law’s requirements. But there’s no evidence of that, either.

A few of the personal stories that Americans for Prosperity has mentioned or highlighted in other ads show that some who were on the individual market are paying less. But while some will find better coverage and better deals on the exchanges — particularly if they qualify for subsidies — it’s certainly true, as we’ve said, that not everyone will come out on the “winning” side.

But “paying more and getting less”? We can’t say that there aren’t some individual cases that might fit such a description, and whether one gets “less” can be a subjective call. But there’s no evidence that “millions” are in such a predicament.

The millions of uninsured who are expected to gain coverage under the law may or may not pay “more,” depending on their medical costs and subsidy status. But they’re certainly not “getting less.”

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/04/skyrocketing-premiums/

 

[flea77]

OK , my cost went up a HUGE amount.

 

[flea77]

Back to the subject. I do believe that the SA's should have some long term coverage for injuries due to playing. That should be pretty easy to accomplish without destroying college football.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

OK , my cost went up a HUGE amount.

Like I said, I don't doubt your situation one bit. Maybe that's more to do with your company and their choices and not the law.

 

[CTJacket]

OK , my cost went up a HUGE amount.

So did mine. I run a small business with one partner and our costs doubled, our deductible went WAY up, and generally speaking it's worse all around.

 

[JacketFromUGA]

Back to the subject. I do believe that the SA's should have some long term coverage for injuries due to playing. That should be pretty easy to accomplish without destroying college football.

I think this is something everyone has just assumed. Ask the random guy on the street and I'm sure the vast majority would say that schools pay for injured athletes. I don't see why it's not the case.

 

[Josh H]

The free tuition argument is a nice one, but its not like the players are truly able to pick their major. Most Tech football players are management majors. I'm not arguing the M-Train is necessarily easy, but its definitely less time-intensive than the engineering disciplines or architecture.

So, you get free tuition, but due to football commitments you aren't free to study what you want. At least the Georgia Tech management program is world class. It's much worse at other Universities.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

OK , my cost went up a HUGE amount.

Yes. I am sorry to hear that.

I personally know the former head of the American Medical Association and he shared with me a power point that he was using across the country to explain AHCA. Long story short, for several decades our health care system has been a hit or miss system with people having radically different experiences depending on lots of variables. What we do know is this. Affordable Health Care seems to have bent the cost curve downward for the first time in history. This pause in otherwise steep annual increases year after year should have a long term effect of lowering overall health care costs in this country. The increases that have been seen are related to covering an additional 20 million or so people added to what was otherwise the lowest increase in costs we have seen.

I seem to be one of the fortunate ones in the system. My company was constantly changing our health care provider to find the best deal for the company and because of the area I lived in there was little to no competition among the insurance companies. I had to change doctors about every two to three years, had no continuity of care, my deductibles were always going up and the insurance covered less and less. For the first time in my life my family can afford to go out to eat more and actually leave town for vacation. And my health coverage is the best it has been in 30 years.

 

[AE 87]

Can we move the DNC talking points out of the football forum?

 

[dressedcheeseside]

Can we move the DNC talking points out of the football forum?

Right along with the Pubby ones.

 

[COJacket]

OK , my cost went up a HUGE amount.

Mine as well. More for less (higher deductibles more copay) so your not alone flea. Know quite a few more in the same boat.

 

[4shotB]

The free tuition argument is a nice one, but its not like the players are truly able to pick their major. Most Tech football players are management majors. I'm not arguing the M-Train is necessarily easy, but its definitely less time-intensive than the engineering disciplines or architecture.

So, you get free tuition, but due to football commitments you aren't free to study what you want. At least the Georgia Tech management program is world class. It's much worse at other Universities.

I've said this before and will repeat myself....I've been very fortunate and blessed to have met some amazing people over the years. But, as silly as it might seem, there are just two groups of people that I have met that have done things that seem beyond comprehension to me. The first (and most important) are the guys who served multiple years of combat duty in WWII. The second group is the handful of guys who played FB at GT AND majored in engineering. These people are the apex predators at the top of the pyramid. Honestly, these are the only two things that I cannot wrap my mind around. Although i did meet a guy once who didn't mind going to the mall with his wife but I consider him to be a statistical outlier so I cannot include him in this discussion.

 

[Skeptic]

Yes. I am sorry to hear that.

I personally know the former head of the American Medical Association and he shared with me a power point that he was using across the country to explain AHCA. Long story short, for several decades our health care system has been a hit or miss system with people having radically different experiences depending on lots of variables. What we do know is this. Affordable Health Care seems to have bent the cost curve downward for the first time in history. This pause in otherwise steep annual increases year after year should have a long term effect of lowering overall health care costs in this country. The increases that have been seen are related to covering an additional 20 million or so people added to what was otherwise the lowest increase in costs we have seen.

I seem to be one of the fortunate ones in the system. My company was constantly changing our health care provider to find the best deal for the company and because of the area I lived in there was little to no competition among the insurance companies. I had to change doctors about every two to three years, had no continuity of care, my deductibles were always going up and the insurance covered less and less. For the first time in my life my family can afford to go out to eat more and actually leave town for vacation. And my health coverage is the best it has been in 30 years.

From the studies I have seen -- and honestly not studied in depth -- your story is more typical than the horror stories. If insurance costs and deductibles go up, they go up every year without fail because insurance companies can. The rate of increase supposedly has been slowed though I am sure there are instances it has not. I'm lucky I don't have to deal with it but two couples I know lost their coveage when their jobs were eliminated and went Affordable Health Care and swear by it. And anything that insures millions of people who weren't insured cannot be a bad thing. And yep, I agree that a player who has a long term recovery from an injury from football ought to have coverage from the school. Of course some things just make sense to me that must not be.

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

Oh good grief.

 

[bke1984]

It's kind of troubling that the Executive Director of the National College Players Association says: "The idea that they are going to get a free education is ridiculous. Half of them won't graduate"

So let me get this straight...half of them won't graduate, and only a very small percentage will make the NFL. So the solution is to pay them for the four years they are in school?

THAT is ridiculous. Why not address the problem of them not graduating?

 

[bke1984]

So there are some things that probably need to be fixed:
- Medical coverage - have some sort of group plan like you would have at work
- Focus on education (i.e. get the players to graduate) - this is by far the most important, but the least stressed
- Realistic stipends (not exactly the same as being paid...basically restructure the scholarships to pay for additional stuff)

...paying the athletes huge salaries is not one of these things. If that's the approach they want to take, fine. Get rid of the student athlete and make them employees and basically ruin college football.

 

[bke1984]

What sad about some of this stuff with the graduation rates is how little people know about that. I was at a birthday part once with a lady that was the former director of football operations at UVA. We got into this same discussion and I brought up the issue that half the players don't graduate. She balked and said, "That's ridiculous...what happens to them then?"

I will say that this is a very real problem that needs to be addressed. The schools should do everything possible to help these kids get their degree...and they should do so even after they stop playing football if that is necessary. I know we've been doing this a good bit in recent years. I'm not sure how widespread that practice is, but I think it's extremely important.

 

[Skeptic]

What sad about some of this stuff with the graduation rates is how little people know about that. I was at a birthday part once with a lady that was the former director of football operations at UVA. We got into this same discussion and I brought up the issue that half the players don't graduate. She balked and said, "That's ridiculous...what happens to them then?"

I will say that this is a very real problem that needs to be addressed. The schools should do everything possible to help these kids get their degree...and they should do so even after they stop playing football if that is necessary. I know we've been doing this a good bit in recent years. I'm not sure how widespread that practice is, but I think it's extremely important.

Is that not graduate, as in ever or not in four years, as is now more typical than not, or not from their first school? I don't follow all those numbers but I do know that the odds weigh against a student graduating from the first school he or she attended, and an enormous number of them take five years or more ... despite all kinds of opportunities for early college courses that would shorten the term. (I'm not even talking about the fraud of online "learning" which universities accept and now are complicit in as money makers. Bet a lot of gifted students "graduated" others from college five or six times in the space of time it took for their degree.

The NCAA in terms of athletics is complicit as well, as are the college officials and trustees who accept and encourage the "one and done" concept just to compete nationally. But it is not even that. It is one semester and done, as the athletes hit classes just enough to stay eligible the second semester and then quit class altogether. I read of one ACC basketball player who was in school three years and did not know where the library was.